Yvonne Ba­boolal

Re­ports in­di­cat­ing that the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen was about to re­tal­i­ate against the Gov­ern­ment was sub­mit­ted by Spe­cial Branch to for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Sel­wyn Richard­son and ex-prime min­is­ter Arthur NR Robin­son just be­fore the group's Ju­ly 27, 1990, at­tempt­ed takeover of the Gov­ern­ment. This was re­vealed by for­mer Spe­cial Branch in­spec­tor Ken­neth Thomp­son at yes­ter­day's hear­ing of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the coup d'etat, at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain. Thomp­son, giv­ing ev­i­dence, said the re­ports sent to gov­ern­ment mem­bers be­tween May and June 1990 were first sub­mit­ted to the Spe­cial Branch by of­fi­cers who had been gath­er­ing in­tel­li­gence on the Ja­maat.

He said he was one of the Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers who sent a re­port af­ter he ob­tained in­tel­li­gence that the Ja­maat was about to do some­thing of the na­ture of an up­ris­ing. A for­mer cor­po­ral Cok­er and an­oth­er in­spec­tor Patrick Provoteaux al­so sent re­ports. Provoteaux sub­mit­ted a re­port about the en­trance at Pi­ar­co Air­port of Amer­i­can Louis Han­iff whom it was as­sumed brought arms and am­mu­ni­tion to T&T for the Ja­maat. Thomp­son said he was quite cer­tain the re­ports were sent to Richard­son and, while he did not have di­rect knowl­edge of it, he knew that in­for­ma­tion like that would al­so be sent to the Prime Min­is­ter.

He said such crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion would have been at the top of the Spe­cial Branch's month­ly in­tel­li­gence re­port to the prime min­is­ter and the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter. Robin­son, prime min­is­ter of the then Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) gov­ern­ment at the time of the in­sur­rec­tion, de­nied at an ear­li­er ses­sion of the in­quiry that he had any fore­knowl­edge of the bloody up­ris­ing. Richard­son said pub­licly af­ter the event that his gov­ern­ment knew some­thing was about to hap­pen but he did not know it had reached thus far, Thomp­son re­called.

He said he was not sure the in­for­ma­tion was sent to then com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Jules Bernard since it was the Spe­cial Branch's chief du­ty to re­port in­tel­li­gence to the prime min­is­ter and the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter. He al­so not­ed that Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers and civil­ians em­ployed with the di­vi­sion had to take an oath of se­cre­cy about in­tel­li­gence ob­tained. He said the sur­veil­lance unit of the Spe­cial Branch had been mon­i­tor­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties of the Ja­maat and, in par­tic­u­lar, its leader Imam Yasin Abu Bakr for a long time be­fore the up­ris­ing.

Thomp­son told the com­mis­sion that as far back as the late 1970s and the ear­ly 1980s Spe­cial Branch knew of the Ja­maat's in­ten­tion to gath­er arms. Spe­cial Branch had in­for­ma­tion that the Ja­maat was gath­er­ing arms, they were in­volved in the re­cruit­ment of young men at risk for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, they were con­duct­ing train­ing ses­sions in cer­tain parts of the coun­try and had links with cer­tain for­eign pow­ers that had an ide­ol­o­gy that T&T did not share, Thomp­son said. Thomp­son will con­tin­ue his ev­i­dence to­mor­row.