TT plane hijacker back home

A man robs a bank and later hijacks a plane, both he says, to make a political protest. Can he be justified? You be the judge. He’s seen tumultuous times, he’s fathered 21 children, and his dreadlocks are yellowing but Auburn “Black Boy” Mason has a zest that belie his 65 years of age. His soul seems not to be burdened by all that has happened to him. Indeed even as he recounts serving prison time in Barbados and most-recently the UK, he talks with an occasional glint of boyish mischief in his eye. And like an errant schoolboy caught in the act by his headmaster, Mason can always offer a good “reason” for why he did what he did. Mason was recently released from a British prison for hijacking an aircraft in 2000 to protest the refusal of Switzerland to grant him asylum from alleged political persecution in Trinidad and Tobago.

While not fully apologetic, he now wants to put his past deeds behind him, and play a part in helping stop the country’s epidemic of youth murders.
Sadly just months before his return, his stepson was killed and son wounded during a beating by a Mayaro mob, in a strange incident which Mason claims is just the latest event in a long history of persecution by his political enemies. Mason’s story began in 1970s in Trinidad where he recounts being jailed for Black Power activities on Nelson Island with personalities like Makandal Daaga and the late George Weekes. As a member of the National Union of Freedom Fighters (NUFF) and claiming he was acting in protest of apartheid in South Africa, he robbed Barclays Bank in Barbados and was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. “Barclays Bank was financing the racist regime of South Africa. Both were our enemies. We were waging war on Barclays Bank. These bank raids were to finance the movement to buy arms”.

After his release and upon his return to Trinidad, despite international tours with a steelband, life remained unsettled for Mason. A common thread running through the ups and downs of his life is his belief that he is being hounded for his former opposition to the PNM, even attributing such persecution to the recent killing and wounding of his stepson and son. This persecution arose he said since Black Power days and most recently in 2000 when he claims to have been wrongly photographed burning a PNM flag during a UNC walkabout of Laventille. He claims the flag was thrust in front of his face by a elderly female PNM supporter while at the same time another unknown person suddenly set it on fire, he then was unwittingly being photographed with the burning flag. Alleging a long-standing and politically-motivated campaign of police harassment against him in Trinidad, in 1999 he flew to Switzerland where he spent nearly a year appealing for refugee status on the grounds of alleged political persecution.

He chose Switzerland, he said, because it did not require an entry visa and significantly it housed the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
In Switzerland he spent 10 months in two refugee camps applying for political asylum. Living with war-refugees from Chech-enya and Kosovo, he had a paid job in the camp kitchen and in clearing a road, and even had some freedom to travel out from the camp. His asylum plea in Switzerland failed be-cause TT was not listed as a “hotspot” country and it still had a constitutional government, although Mason recounted: “Of course this is nonsense. Black people are dying like flies here.” Mason remembered July 17, 2000 when he was handed two plane-tickets — from Zurich to Gatwick and from Gatwick to Trinidad — and a date to leave Switzerland. Accusing Switzerland of breaching his human rights by ordering him back to Trinidad where he said his life was in danger, he decided to highlight his plight on the actual aircraft. “To highlight my plight, and in a moment of depression, I decided to end it all.

I went into the toilet of the aircraft with a bottle of tablets (ie anti-depressants), took a handful, and swallowed them. An airhostess had been maccoing me when I went into the toilet, so when I came out I snatched her neck. I had a scissors from my briefcase (which he held to her neck) and a dictaphone in my other hand. I said it was a bomb and held my finger over the button. I told her to walk to the pilot. Another hostess signalled the captain that something was wrong. He came out. He asked me what were my demands. I said ‘This is a hijack’. I said he must radio the ground crew and have representatives of the United Nations Human Rights Organisation on the ground when I land, to let them know I’m being forced to return to Trinidad, where I face political persecution. He said he’ll meet my demands but that he had a request of me. That I release the airhostess, which I did.  Right then I was thinking of running into the cockpit and pushing and pulling anything I could get my hands on.  But seeing all the young children on board and the 99 passengers, I decided to let it cool off. The pilot sat with me. I had said the dictaphone was a bomb. He got panicky. His co-pilot landed the plane roughly, making him shout ‘What the ....!’. After the plane landed at Gatwick I said to him ‘What’s in it for me?’. He replied: ‘You don’t need hostages, you’ve got $25 million worth of plane. He said: ‘You are going off with me’. I suspected something. I unbuttoned my trousers. Suddenly he made the biggest leap I’ve ever seen, off the plane. Then there were snipers all around me, so close I could even read the writing on their gun, ‘Heckler and Koch.’ There were 100 guns on me. My trousers came down so they could see I was not armed.” At the trial he was charged with hijacking, wounding the airhostess, and a bomb-hoax, but after a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to just the bomb hoax. “I got four years.  “I was sentenced on 10 November 2000. My sentence ended on 17 March 2003. I served 27 months, at seven different prisons. Afterwards I stayed in the UK to fight for political asylum.”

Initially he praised the jail amenities and describes life in a UK prison as “100 percent better than Trinidad”. But he added: “Yet still prison life is a Hell; I would not like to recommend it to the youths.” On the downside, he said he was once beaten by two guards for displaying a newspaper photo of terrorist Osama bin Laden. He shows a wound in his hand where he had fended off a blow from another prisoner who had tried to stab him with a pen, an incident he claims was instigated by the guards. After his sentence, he remained in detention while his UK asylum plea came up for hearing three times before a tribunal and court judges. He said he had been entitled to bail and that even though two members of the Pan African Unity had offered to stand his bail, they had been refused. “That’s the type of plot they use to wear you down. I got fed up, and returned to Trinidad. They flew me out on September 4. Two MI5 men escorted me from Winchester Prison to Gatwick Airport, and from Gatwick to Tobago”. Mason in fact had been no stranger to the UK having previously toured with steelbands. He now even shows off a photo of him in the UK with Tobago Crusoe, with whom he used to play in pubs on Sundays.