Yvonne Ba­boolal

Colonel Hugh Vi­dale met with Ja­maat al Mus­limeen leader Imam Yasin Abu Bakr short­ly be­fore his group em­barked on an at­tempt­ed takeover of the coun­try in Ju­ly 1990.Col Vi­dale, in charge of the army's First Batal­lion at the time, met with Bakr at Camp Og­den.Vi­dale con­firmed the meet­ing when ques­tioned about it by Avory Sinanan SC lead coun­sel at the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the at­tempt­ed coup d'etat. The ses­sion was held at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Vi­dale, giv­ing ev­i­dence be­fore the com­mis­sion, dis­closed "Bakr ar­rived at camp Og­den and asked to see me."I con­tact­ed Colonel Ralph Brown, my im­me­di­ate su­per­vi­sor (then Chief of De­fence Staff) and asked what do I do."He said wait and, from my un­der­stand­ing, he con­tact­ed Joe Theodore (then army com­man­der) and told him Bakr was in Camp Og­den wait­ing to see him."Theodore said wait and he called Sel­wyn Richard­son (then Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter) telling him that Bakr want­ed to see him and ask­ing him what to do."Richard­son told Theodore to tell me to see about Bakr. That's when I in­vit­ed the man in," Vi­dale re­called.At the time, the army oc­cu­pied a po­si­tion near the Ja­maat's #1 Mu­cu­rapo Road com­pound, where Vi­dale was in charge.

Claim­ing it was his first vis­it with the Imam, Vi­dale said the meet­ing with Bakr last­ed about "five to ten min­utes"."He came to com­plain about my peo­ple be­ing on his land, that he was hard done by it and that the land was his. I said the mat­ter is in court. Don't talk to me."Vi­dale said one Lt Archie Phillips was present at the meet­ing but no one took notes or any kind of record. He said he re­port­ed back to Col Brown.Vi­dale said at the time Bakr was meet­ing with any and every­body and would talk about the Ja­maat's Mu­cu­rapo land is­sue, in­clud­ing then Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Chief Jus­tice."At the time, Bakr was mak­ing the rounds. I was one in a long line of peo­ple," he told the com­mis­sion.

Sinanan sub­mit­ted that then Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Joseph Toney, in an ear­li­er hear­ing be­fore the com­mis­sion said he raised the mat­ter of Vi­dale's meet­ing with Bakr and said Vi­dale was un­der some kind of in­ves­ti­ga­tion but was lat­er ex­on­er­at­ed.Vi­dale said he was not aware he was un­der any in­ves­ti­ga­tion.He fur­ther de­nied that any fac­tion of the army had any kind of sym­pa­thy with the Mus­limeen's cause.Vi­dale al­so claimed he knew noth­ing about any con­ver­sa­tion with David Na­gasser, an army ma­jor at the time, who warned him that he felt "some­thing was hap­pen­ing" in­volv­ing the Ja­maat.In an ear­li­er hear­ing be­fore the com­mis­sion, Na­gasser said he had an in­for­mal con­ver­sa­tion with Vi­dale out­side his of­fice two to three months pri­or to the coup at­tempt dur­ing which he dis­closed that he had ver­i­fied that the Ja­maat was con­duct­ing mil­i­tary train­ing at a camp in Rio Claro.

Na­gasser said he told Vi­dale that pub­lic ru­mour was that the Ja­maat was im­port­ing weapons and had links with the Mid­dle East.Vi­dale told the com­mis­sion he did not re­mem­ber the con­ver­sa­tion."If Na­gasser had told me, I would have passed it through the chain (of com­mand) and we would have gone and done an op­er­a­tion in the area."Mak­ing a clear dis­tinc­tion be­tween the roles of the po­lice and the army through­out his ev­i­dence, Vi­dale said it was al­so the work of the Spe­cial Branch to do in­tel­li­gence work.He said it was the army's work to de­fend the coun­try.

Probed about how the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen in­sur­gents could leave their Mu­cu­rapo com­pound "en masse" on the af­ter­noon of Ju­ly 27, 1990 un­der the watch­ful eyes of the army post next door, Vi­dale said, "The func­tion of the sol­diers was not to po­lice the Mus­limeen but to en­sure that they did not oc­cu­py the land as the State told them not to."He said it was the group's Fri­day prayer and peo­ple came to pray and they left. "I don't know about en masse.""The po­lice were al­so there. That was their func­tion (to po­lice the Ja­maat), not ours."Vi­dale de­fend­ed the per­for­mance of the army dur­ing the up­ris­ing, say­ing that on a scale of one to five, they rat­ed five.He said the army did pri­or counter rev­o­lu­tion war­fare train­ing, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the 1970s up­ris­ing.Vi­dale said the com­mand of then Prime Min­is­ter Arthur NR Robin­son, while he was a Red House hostage, to "at­tack with full force" was one in­struc­tion he would have mil­i­tat­ed against."You had the lives of the MPs to con­sid­er. You could not at­tack with full force," he said.The en­quiry re­sumes on June 21 and will con­tin­ue un­til Ju­ly 1.