‘Bakr has been on my back’

THIS YEAR marks 20 years that a man called Yasin Abu Bakr has been on my back. Why? For 20 long years Bakr has been occupying the pages of my notebooks and hundreds of pages in the newspapers for which I worked and am working. Over the years, I have reported and dealt with persons of all walks of life, who crop up every now and then. I make passing references to some of these persons such as, Dole Chadee and Clint Huggins, to name just two. They came, they were taken before the court, found guilty and despatched to the hereafter.

Not Abu Bakr, the Jamaat al Muslimeen leader who last week got off again when the jury in the conspiracy to murder trial against him failed to agree and the judge ordered a retrial. The man is fated to haunt the pages of my notebook again. My first report on this controversial figure was in 1985 when Bakr was erecting the mosque on lands at Mucurapo Road, St James. Up until then, there was a dispute about the lands at Mucurapo. The Port-of-Spain City Corporation said the lands belonged to them and Bakr insisted that the Government under the then Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams, gave the lands to the Islamic Missionary Guild of which Bakr claimed the Muslimeen was a member.

Believing that the Muslimeen were the rightful owners of the lands, the Jamaat began building a mosque on the premises. The City Corporation, whose Mayor at the time was Stevenson Sarjeant, took court action, seeking to stop the Muslimeen from erecting what they called an illegal structure. The High Court granted the injunction preventing the Muslimeen from erecting the building and ordering that it be demolished. Bakr ignored the court and the work continued. Contempt proceedings were then initiated against him. Madame Justice Jean Permanand found Bakr guilty of contempt of court and hauled the Jamaat leader to prison for 21 days.

Although Bakr had been around for years prior to 1985, this was the wake-up call for citizens of this country as to the man Yasin Abu Bakr.
The controversy raged on as to who was the rightful owner of the lands, but one thing was certain, the mosque was completed and there was a big official opening attended by politicians who later became Government ministers. The country started to pay more notice to Bakr and the Muslimeen. Bakr started having a voice in every thing controversial in the country and within a short time, he was making statements related to Trinidad and Tobago’s politics.

In April 1990, another controversy cropped up with Bakr and the Jamaat, which laid the foundation on the Mucurapo lands for a proposed  secondary school. A dispute arose as the foundation was said to be on State lands and not City Corporation lands. Within days, police and army officials moved onto the lands, set up tents and stopped the Jamaat from erecting the secondary school. Into the scene walks Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj as the Jamaat’s attorney and he filed a constitutional motion against the State for what the Muslimeen called the unlawful occupation of the lands by the police and soldiers. At that time, Jules Bernard was the Commissioner of Police and Colonel Joseph Theodore was the Chief of Defence Staff. While the controversy raged on, and the High Court was dealing with the matter, behind the scenes, the stage was set for other things by the Jamaat.

With the National Stadium packed to capacity with people there to witness the Caribbean Football Union Final between TT and Jamaica on July 27, 1990, the Muslimeen moved into Port-of-Spain with brute force and sophisticated weaponry. They took over the Red House where Parliament was sitting, TTT, and Radio Trinidad, the latter two situated on Maraval Road. With guns blazing they held the then Prime Minister Prime Minister ANR Robinson and many other Cabinet Ministers hostage in the Red House. Selwyn Richardson, the Minister of National Security, was shot and wounded, while Member of Parliament for Diego Martin Central, Leo Des Vignes was severely wounded.

Ministers, MPs and journalists were held hostage at gunpoint, within sight and smell of those who had been killed as the gunmen stormed the Red House. Across the street from the Red House, the Police Headquarters building was virtually bombed and exploded in flames, killing the young police sentry on duty. During the next six days, the country went back 20 years, with the destruction of the city and the loss of lives. On August 1 — Emancipation Day, the same day Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait — the hostages in both the Red House and TTT were released and the insurgents surrendered. For the six days, the city of Port-of-Spain was virtually destroyed by fires and widespread looting.

One hundred and fourteen Muslimeen insurgents were taken into custody and over the next few days they were officially charged with murder, treason, shooting, possession of arms and other offences. They argued that they were in possession of an amnesty signed by the then acting President Joseph Emmanuel Carter.
Through attorney Maharaj, the