On this day in 1990, I was heading to the Hasely Crawford National Stadium to meet some friends. T&T Soca Warriors were scheduled to play and a big crowd was expected to show up for the Friday afternoon clash.
On one of the side roads, making my way to Mucurapo Road, I passed a jeep overflowing with policemen with high-powered weapons. They were flagging me down and yelling something as they sped past me. What they were shouting I would never know. It all happened so fast.
When I drove past the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen compound, I knew something was going on because gunshots were going off at close range and there were officers with weapons drawn hiding behind neighbouring walls. I thought it was a robbery in progress.
So I am finally in my stadium seat with my friends and we could see thick black smoke bellowing from downtown Port-of-Spain. None of us knew at the time what was on fire. I gave my friends my story about the commotion I had just witnessed on Mucurapo road. A media worker came up to us and mentioned that he had just heard that Abu Bakr and several of his followers had taken over the parliament building and the state-owned media house, TTT.
The press official said that the police headquarters on St Vincent Street was ablaze after the insurrectionists had blown it up. That explained the smoke we saw. It also explained what I had just witnessed at the Jamaat's compound. The story that we were getting from the media personnel sounded credible yet at the same time our reaction was more like "Trinis could real talk crap, eh."
We didn't have cell phones back in those days and I needed to make a call to check on my family, so I made my way downstairs to use one of the few pay phones in the stadium. There was a long line of people waiting to use the phones. Each person that came off the phone advised the rest of us that were still in line that the rumour we were hearing were true.
Panic started to set in. Patrons were rushing to their cars and there was instant gridlock to get out of the stadium. The traffic continued all the way home. By the time I got home, our neighbours were spilling out unto the street as we all tried to digest what was going on.
It wasn't long before Abu Bakr and a couple of his men with big guns were on my little 14-inch black and white TV screen, spewing a set of nonsense and threatening our peaceful way of life. Poor Jones P Madeira was instructed to speak to viewers live on TV at gunpoint.
The destruction of property that took place during the 1990 attempted coup set our nation back many decades and several businesses never recovered from the losses that came about after the widespread looting. Hundreds of millions of dollars and dozens of lives were lost on that day. Many people that lost their loved ones have never been the same.
The Jamaat-al-Muslimeen members have never showed any sign of remorse for their actions on that dark day in 1990. It has left a nasty taste in all law-abiding citizens' mouths and many argue that our country has never been the same.
Excuse the pun but in recent days, there has been an explosion of radical terrorism all over the world. These brainwashed individuals spare no one. Everyone is a target for these vicious beasts!
Now more than ever, we need to be vigilant in T&T.
There are gangs at war and lives are being flushed out in our country daily. The recent execution of Robocop in Enterprise by a new gang calling themselves Unruly Isis tells us there is something going down in the underworld. There is talk of Isis members returning home. We still have not been given an official reason why there are T&T Muslims detained in Venezuela.
Keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground. Anything can happen in any part of the world these days.
Steven Valdez,
Westmoorings