By NAN Contributor
News Americas, NASSAU, Bahamas, Tues. Jan. 31, 2017: A MSNBC guest and retired United States Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer who claimed that ISIS has dozens of members from The Bahamas, Trinidad and Brazil, has been slammed by The Bahamas’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs for presenting fake news or alternative facts.
Appearing on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show on Saturday, guest Malcolm Nance, claimed that The Bahamas, Trinidad and Brazil has more terrorists than the seven countries placed on a banned list in an executive order by the US’ 45th President.
Nance was reacting to the controversial Donald Trump immigration executive order titled: “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” that has banned nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S. for 90 days.
Describing the ban as nonsensical, Nance said: “I can’t make sense of any of this. This is just playing into the hands of ISIS. We haven’t banned terrorists from Brazil, Trinidad, or the Bahamas who have more terrorist members than any of those countries”
He added, “You are punishing people who have nothing to do with terrorism, and you are now arming the terrorists with all the propaganda they need to show that the US is a country of racists and doesn’t care about Muslims.”
But Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell said they have no knowledge of any such terrorists or group of terrorists or any individual terrorist that is related to ISIS or any other terrorist organization in The Bahamas.
On local ZNS TV, Minister Mitchell called the claim rubbish and said that the Bahamas Mission to the United States has been asked to reach out to US counterparts, to MSNBC and Nance himself to find out what the source of the allegation is.
The Mission has been asked for a retraction “forthwith.”
Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said Nance’s “broad and simplistic statement is not supported by fact and ignores the robust and substantial national security cooperative partnership between Trinidad and Tobago and the United States.”
Nance’s comments come as the Global Terrorism Index shows that while Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Syria and Egypt rank in the top five on the global terror list, Brazil ranks at 73 and Trinidad and Tobago ranks at 89 – both behind Canada. The Bahamas is not on the list of 162 nations.
However, as of last year, reports from British diplomat Arthur Snell claimed that some 100 Muslims from Trinidad and Tobago had traveled to Syria to join the group known as ISIS. And last year in Brazil, ahead of the Summer Olympics, a dozen Brazilian citizens were accused of pledging allegiance to Isis and allegedly being part of group called defenders of sharia even as officials there called them ‘absolutely amateur.’
