Re­tired army ma­jor David Nages­sar had in­for­ma­tion pri­or to the 1990 up­ris­ing that the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen was do­ing mil­i­tary train­ing and dis­cussed his con­cerns with Colonel Hugh Vi­dale but nev­er re­ceived in­struc­tions from his su­pe­ri­ors re­gard­ing the group. Nages­sar, who was part of a se­cu­ri­ty unit at­tached to the prime min­is­ter and the pres­i­dent at the time, made the rev­e­la­tions as he gave ev­i­dence to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the coup d'etat at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Nages­sar told the com­mis­sion af­ter the coup he be­came an in­tel­li­gence se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer for the De­fence Force and was privy to army records about events sur­round­ing the 1990 in­sur­rec­tion. He with­held sev­er­al names which he told the com­mis­sion he want­ed to dis­close pri­vate­ly. At the end of the day's hear­ing, the com­mis­sion dis­missed all, ex­cept the court re­porters, so mem­bers could hear part of Nages­sar's ev­i­dence in cam­era. Ear­li­er, Nages­sar said a po­lice of­fi­cer told him the Mus­limeen mem­bers were do­ing mil­i­tary train­ing at a camp in Rio Claro.

He said he asked a sol­dier trained in in­tel­li­gence from the Rio Claro area to check out the camp. He said the sol­dier re­port­ed back that he missed en­coun­ter­ing the Mus­limeen there by a few days. He said the sol­dier re­port­ed there was ev­i­dence of a struc­tured camp, not like a makeshift hunter's camp, and spent am­mu­ni­tion. Nages­sar said there was al­so ev­i­dence that one or two for­mer sol­diers as­sist­ed the Mus­limeen with train­ing. He said af­ter the up­ris­ing, the name of one sol­dier sur­faced but af­ter a roll call he was nowhere to be found. Nages­sar asked to dis­close the man's name pri­vate­ly to the com­mis­sion.

He not­ed that the Ja­maat's land dis­pute was very much in the pub­lic do­main at the time and arms were found on the or­gan­i­sa­tion's Mu­cu­rapo Road com­pound dur­ing raids by the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. He said at the time the Mus­limeen were col­lect­ing funds which he be­lieved was to be used to fund its op­er­a­tions.

He said the eco­nom­ic de­pres­sion in the coun­try at the time made it easy for the Ja­maat to build a base among poor, delin­quent youth. Nages­sar told the com­mis­sion he felt the Ja­maat's in­volve­ment in the Sum­mit of the Peo­ple's Or­gan­i­sa­tion was a covert launch of their clan­des­tine op­er­a­tions. YB