A 29-year-old coconut vendor was shot dead a short distance from his Dookiesingh Trace, St Augustine, home by three men who had been stalking him for almost a week. His murder is the 55th in 85 days.

Mere hours after the murder, police officers arrested two suspects and seized a gun believed to be the murder weapon. Yesterday, the body of Nizam “Sheriff” Mohammed was left lying uncovered at College Road, St Augustine, for more than one hour before the arrival of the District Medical Officer. Nearby, his 18-year-old common law wife Sunita Ramjattan sat in a chair and wept as she stared at the body. Police reports revealed that around 8.40 am Mohammed was at home with his wife when he was told by a neighbour that three men in a car were looking for him. Mohammed, who had an unlicensed gun, walked towards the area where the car was parked and fired a shot at the men. The bullet missed its mark and one of the occupants of the car fired one shot striking Mohammed on the left side of the head. He slumped to the ground and died.

The killer and his accomplices fled the scene and officers of the Tunapuna Police Station were alerted. A neighbour retrieved Mohammed’s unlicensed gun. Police investigators told Newsday Mohammed was a known drug pusher. They said he had a previous confrontation with three men and had reported the threats to the police. Neighbours described Mohammed as a kind person who was always willing to assist anyone. They added that it was his dream to build a proper home, and over the weekend, he purchased galvanize sheets and started work on the house. He had also planned to marry Ramjattan and start a family. Police investigators said the arrest of a third man is imminent. ASP Dillon, Inspector Grant, Sgt Modest, Cpls Collins, Ignacio and others visited the scene and are investigating.

RETIRED mathematics school teacher Ralphy Ramcharan was found dead yesterday, hours after a relative made a missing person report to the police.

Police sources told Newsday that a relative of Ramcharan informed the police that he left his Debe, San Fernando, home to go to Curepe to tutor a student sometime on Tuesday, but he did not return.  Relatives reportedly made several futile searches for Ramcharan and eventually made a report to the San Fernando police when they failed to locate him. Around 10 am yesterday, Ramcharan’s naked body was found submerged in a river by three gardeners who were going to attend to their crops in a garden off a dirt track south of the Maritime Plaza Roundabout. Ramcharan, 41, was beaten to death.  His hands were tied in front of his body with green cord, while his legs were bound at the knees and ankles.  

A wheel spanner, suspected by the police to be the death weapon, and burnt clothes, believed to belong to Ramcharan, were found near the scene. Police said they could find no clear motive for the retired school teacher’s killing, the 53rd for the year, according to homicide sources.   However, lawmen say they are working along certain lines, including a possible kidnapping.  The police have estimated the time of death to be sometime on Tuesday night at the same location since there was blood around the area. According to the police, the three gardeners were walking along Black Dirt Trace around 10 am yesterday when they discovered a body lying face down in the river.

After the find, the shocked trio contacted the Barataria/El Socorro Police Station and a party of officers headed by Sr Supt Desmond Lambert,  visited the scene and conducted investigations. District Medical Officer (DMO) Dr Althea Holder also visited the scene, viewed the body,  pronounced it dead and ordered its removal to the mortuary for onward transmission to the Forensic Science Centre.

Vishwanath Jawahir, the 17th  witness called by the State in the Clint Huggins murder trial, testified yesterday that he had given two statements to the police. But in the first one he did not state everything he knew because he was afraid.

Jawahir, a taxi driver from Cunapo, Sangre Grande, admitted that in his first statement he did not relate how accused Leslie Huggins had asked him to drive to the Uriah Butler Highway, Mt Hope, to observe whether the Laurel motor car Leslie and “the boys” had set on fire for was completely burnt, nor did he tell the police all he knew. However, in his second statement, he went into details about his conversation with Leslie and what he had done and heard. Jawahir, also called Sharkie, had spent two days in the witness box. During re-examination by State prosecutor Wayne Rajbansie yesterday, he said the reason for not telling the police all he knew was because he learnt that a body was found in the burnt car and that they would have thought he was involved in the man’s death,  if he had said anything. He said: “I was scared so I left it out.”

Leslie, his cousin Arnold Huggins and friend Junior Phillip are before Justice Alice York Soo-Hon  in the Port-of-Spain Third Criminal Court charged with the February 20, 1996, — Carnival Tuesday, murder of Clint Higgins. They are being represented by Obsourne Charles SC, Keith Scotland, Ian Stuart Brook, Christilyn Moore and Dawn Mohan.  Also prosecuting with Rajbansie is Natasha George. Clint was the key State witness in the murder trial against Dole Chadee and his gang for murder. When hearing resumes today, attorneys are expected to continue legal submissions on a certain issue.

YASIN ABU BAKR, the man who led the 1990 aborted coup in Trinidad, broke down in tears yesterday at the funeral of  the “Laventille Don” Mark Guerra, a high-ranking Jamaat Al Muslimeen member who was shot dead in front of his Wallerfield farm on Sunday evening.

It was the first time that the media has seen the Muslimeen leader shed tears ever since his proverbial rise to controversy in the early 1980s. What was more interesting was the way Bakr described Guerra — “a good man who died a martyr.” Guerra, also called Abdul Jaleel, was assassinated, according to police investigators, who up to now have not arrested anyone for the murder. Yesterday, more than 2,000 persons, most of them in Muslim garb, turned up at the Muslimeen Mosque on Mucurapo Road, St James, for the service. Two of Guerra’s wives and some of his children were present. Kenneth Collis, former PNM Minister and the man now in charge of the URP where Guerra last worked, was there to give support. Even the police and the soldiers were present, but outside the premises.

Before the 2 pm service at the mosque, the people of John John where Guerra lived had a last chance to see him at the Carib Tokyo panyard. But the scene was set at Mucurapo. The body was placed in a white open casket near the entrance of the mosque for mourners to catch a glimpse of a man described as a community leader, but who police say was a criminal suspected of many crimes. In his brief address in the hot sun west of the mosque, Bakr blamed the media for publishing the wrong things about Guerra. He started off by saying that “Jaleel” worked tirelessly for the PNM in the last general elections.

Bakr said Guerra came to the mosque as a boy hooked on cocaine. The Muslimeen leader said he turned Guerra’s life around and credited him with taking children off the streets. “What happened to him is an act of jealousy,” said Bakr as he broke into tears before a stunned congregation. “This was a man who came from the ground right up. You think you knew him? Well, I knew him. He is irreplaceable in John John; I have found nobody to replace him. I have given up looking for somebody to replace him,” the Jamaat leader added. Bakr pleaded with his tribe to exercise self-restraint. “The police are responsible for the inquiries into his death. Let them do their job. We don’t need revenge. We don’t preach war, jealousy, hatred, envy, we don’t want any revenge. Do not go on any witch hunt, please do not go looking for the killers.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by Guerra’s mother Louise Pierre who flew in from the United States with other siblings for the funeral. Guerra’s younger brother Marlon, who also came from the US, asked that no one seek revenge for the killing. “The men who did this will pay. God will be the judge, I feel it in my heart.” The funeral service outside the mosque was swift and on the signal from their leader, Muslimeen members placed the casket in the hearse for the walk to the Lapeyrouse Cemetery in Port-of-Spain. Throughout the walk, Bakr kept a stern face as he was surrounded by his members. Not since the killing of another high-ranking Muslimeen member, Abdul Kareen in St James in 1985, has there been such interest at the Jamaat. But the police did not only keep watch of the proceedings. They filmed everyone entering the cemetery. That caused many of the mourners to hide their faces, some even becoming highly annoyed at being filmed.

THE FATHER of suspected Al Qaeda operative Adnan El Skukrijumah has been fired from the mosque where he preaches in Florida. His son, branded a terror suspect and the subject of a worldwide FBI search, has disappeared. Now a respected Islamic holy man’s position at a Miramar mosque is gone, too.

“They fired me,” Gulshair El Shukrijumah said on Tuesday. “I can’t sleep at night anymore.” Mosque leaders say they do not suspect El Shukrijumah, 73, of terrorism. But they say their community is nervous about publicity over federal investigators accusing his 27-year-old son, Adnan of possibly coordinating al-Qaeda’s next attack against America.
“In light of what happened he was asked to step down,” said Trinidadian board member Abzal Hosein. “We want to let people know at no time we have  any affiliation with terrorists.”

As Gulshair El Shukrijumah nervously awaited a follow-up meeting with mosque directors Tuesday, he retraced elements of his religious career, which included 20 years of missionary work for the Saudi government. In 1995 he retired after 10 years leading a Brooklyn mosque where at least one suspect from the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993 prayed. El Shukrijumah said he testified in a trial in which Abdul Rasheed was convicted of plotting to blow up the United Nations and the Holland Tunnel. El Shukrijumah said he understood that Rasheed, prosecuted under his legal name of Clement Hampton-El, had fought in Afghanistan to “help his brothers, the Muslims.” “He was prepared to give his life for that, and that does not mean  he was involved in any acts of terror,” El Shukrijumah said. “But I do not know.”

When he retired, El’Shukrijumah sent for his wife and six children in Saudi Arabia and moved to Florida. On Fridays, 50 to 100 people congregate at the small Al Hijrah  mosque on SW 27th St in Miramar, but the simple white building was empty most of Tuesday. Mosque leaders said they would continue to extend a small stipend  and charity to the family. Gulshair says the board asked him to serve as Imam, or spiritual leader, three years ago. He took two months to decide, uncomfortable with the idea that the leadership would want him to promote Trinidad. He is a Guyanese native more interested in spreading Islam. Most of Al-Hijrah’s 100 to 200 congregants are Trinidadians, members said. A group of nine or 10 Trinidadian friends founded the Caribbean American Islamic Association about a decade ago, said Hosein. A few years ago they bought a building next to the El Shukrijumah home. “After getting to know him and the experience and knowledge he had of Islam, we didn’t want that to go to waste. And what was more important, he was living next door.”

The FBI has said that during a meeting at the Miramar mosque a young convicted terror plotter, Imran Mandhai, tried to recruit Adnan El Shukrijumah to a scheme to induce anarchy by blowing up a Florida power plant. Federal authorities said El Shukrijumah refused, guessing correctly that he was being monitored by an FBI informant. Gulshair El Shukrijumah said he does not think the meeting took place at the mosque, but Hosein said FBI investigators must know what they are talking about. Adnan El ‘Shukrijumah’s family insists that the young man who left for Trinidad to pursue the import-export business in May 2001 is not  affiliated with terrorists. They say that he wanted to help his financially strapped father and that he would never want to harm a country where his family lives.

President George Maxwell Richards fell down last night on his first official engagement as the country’s fourth Head of State, as he attended the opening of the new National Library Complex on Abercromby Street, Port-of-Spain.

The incident occurred after the 90-minute opening ceremony. In an apparent mix up of protocol, Prime Minister Patrick Manning and other Cabinet Ministers had left their seats in the front row of the amphitheatre, to unveil a plaque, leaving the President and the First Lady Dr Jean Richards awkwardly seated. After half-minute Richards rose too. Ascending from the amphitheatre, he climbed two steps but suddenly lost his footing and fell forward. He reached out, his two hands onto the steps, to break his fall. He was helped by other guests seated nearby. Few persons witnessed the mishap. President Richards then made his way inside the library building. He led a select party that was given a tour of the facility including the children’s library.

For the rest of the tour President Richards betrayed no sign of being affected by the accident, even politely and formally greeting reporters. In the formal opening ceremony Manning had described the evening as a “truly great event” saying he felt extremely gratified. Saying he had turned the sod on the site some nine years ago, but that the project had met political opposition and fallen into abeyance, Manning said: “It was only the vigilance and persistence of this Government while in opposition, and I hasten to add not civil disobedience or some variation of it, that saw the resumption of construction of the national library building.” Manning justified the project saying  that educated minds were required if we were to eradicate poverty, to make rational judgments, to argue dispassionately, and to make scientific and other breakthroughs. He said the Government in 1993 had seen the library as necessary for the invigoration of our intellectual and cultural life, and the positive social evolution and economic transformation of our country.

Saying the library was part of the capital’s new city centre already established by the Brian Lara Promenade and City Gate, Manning added: “Phenomenal things are in line for Port-of-Spain”. But Manning warned that a new library building was not enough to create an information-culcating and knowledge-based society. He said: “We need a cultural revolution.” He explained there was a challenge for the library to nurture a taste for quality material ranging from ancient classics to keeping abreast of global trends, and to develop a capacity for clinical examination and dispassionate analysis. Manning also urged librarians and teachers to promote the habit of reading.  “The business of reading is seeing difficult times in Trinidad and Tobago. Too many of our citizens, both young and old, hardly do much of it perhaps confining themselves to newspapers, light novels and magazines, television and other entertainment media. This has a bearing on our capacity for discernment and rational discourse”.

Earlier NALIS chairperson Prof Bridget Brereton announced that the library would open to the public today at 8.30 am. It will offer facilities including free public  Internet access via 121 computer terminals. The ground floor holds a  children’s library including a section for babies, and a section for teenagers and  young adults. She vowed: “Inclusion is our watchword”. She explained the library catered for different groups of people, including facilities for the differently-abled.  The library has voice-activated computers and braille facilities. She said the library also has commercial facilities like a cinema, restaurant and amphitheatre. Architect Colin Laird described the building as being both “green” in utilising its own water supply to cool it and being well-insulated, and as “smart” in being controlled by advanced computer technology, including electronic sensors to activate reading lights.

Only a few days before she was hacked to death by her husband, 32-year-old Gilliam Rajpaul confided in her family’s priest that she was concerned her life might have been in danger. The woman reportedly wanted to leave her matrimonial home, but was told by Fr Rudy Mohammed of St Dominic’s Roman Catholic Church, Penal, to “think it over”.

Yesterday, Fr Mohammed told Newsday he had counselled Rajpaul and her husband, 41-year-old Glen, mere days before Glen chopped his wife to death, then set ablaze their house at Ramjattan Trace, Penal, and hanged himself inside the burning building. According to Fr Mohammed, it was only recently that Glen Rajpaul visited the church and admitted he was having domestic problems with his wife. The priest said one month ago the couple had a prayer service at their home, which Glen described as “a turning point in his life”. Recently, Fr Mohammed said, Rajpaul stated he wanted to change his life so he could be “a better father and husband”.

However, this past weekend Rajpaul admitted he was still having marital problems with which he could no longer cope. According to Fr Mohammed, he told Rajpaul to “take things easy and relax”, promising that he (Mohammed) would speak with Gillian and that he would arrange to have the couple receive professional marriage counselling. Fr Mohammed said he later telephoned Gillian Rajpaul to “talk to her about the situation”. It was during that telephone conversation, the priest told Newsday, the woman indicated that she feared for her safety. “She kept saying she was afraid of him and that he kept threatening her,” Fr Mohammed said. It was only at this point, he said, he realised how serious the couple’s problems were. Until then, he said, he didn’t think their problems were “that bad”. Fr Mohammed said he promised Gillian, as well, that he would arrange to have a counsellor visit her and her husband, so they could try to resolve their differences. “She was upset and wanted to leave home and I told her to think it over,” he told Newsday.

According to Fr Mohammed, he next saw Glen Rajpaul on Tuesday morning inside the church. He said he approached Rajpaul, who was singing and concentrating deeply on the prayer service. The priest said Rajpaul’s mother was also present and the man seemed “perfectly normal” and didn’t appear to have any kinds of problems on his mind. Fr Mohammed said he advised Rajpaul that in all marriages people take each other for granted, kept things locked up inside until it reaches a point where it breaks. All the while, Fr Mohammed recalled, Rajpaul kept answering “yes, yes”. Rajpaul, Fr Mohammed said, was also advised to “keep it under wraps” and that he shouldn’t frighten his wife. The priest said he again raised the subject of counselling for the couple and Rajpaul seemed interested.

According to Fr Mohammed, he left Rajpaul inside the church to attend to another matter. It was while returning to the church to meet Rajpaul, Fr Mohammed said, someone called out to him to indicate that Rajpaul had killed his wife and committed suicide. The priest said he was surprised by the turn of events, going so far to describe Rajpaul as “a very nice man”.

BAGHDAD: At least 15 people died yesterday when an apparent US air raid devastated a busy residential and commercial street in Baghdad. Charred bodies and mangled cars littered the area, sparking fury among crowds of Iraqis, after what witnesses and local officials said was a double missile strike.

Reuters correspondents at the scene said they had counted at least 15 bodies. Some lay in the wreckage of burned out cars. Crowds of enraged Iraqis carried bodies away, chanting: “There is no god but Allah” and “We will sacrifice our blood and souls for you, Saddam!” Fire engines and ambulances raced to the area as fires blazed in shattered buildings. Flames spewed from an oil tanker. US military officials said they could not confirm the incident. “We’re seeing those same reports. We’re looking into it,” said one US official at American military headquarters in Doha. The official, who asked not to be named, said the United States took extreme caution to avoid civilian casualties, but accidents sometimes happened. “In this case, we’re not sure,” the official said. One resident said the missiles hit the busy street, which is lined by ground-floor shops underneath residential apartment blocks, at around 11.30 am. He said he believed as many as 27 people had been killed in the attack.

Haneed Dulaimi, head of the Iraqi defence unit for the district, said: “There are at least 13 killed and some 30 injured. Two missiles hit the street.” He said there were no military facilities in the area. The United States and Britain have pounded targets in and around Baghdad with repeated air raids since the war to oust President Saddam Hussein began last Thursday. They say they are using precision-guided bombs and missiles which can destroy military and government targets while keeping civilian casualties to a minimum. Iraqi and Arab television stations broadcast footage of the aftermath of the attack, showing bloodied corpses and angry crowds — images likely to stir outrage in the Arab world and among opponents of the war.