On July 27, 1990, the day Jamaat al Muslimeen insurgents attempted to overthrow the government, soldiers stationed at a post near the group's Mucurapo Road mosque reported seeing a heavy presence of vehicles and maxi- taxis coming into and leaving the compound.However, it did not appear that this information was ever passed on to intelligence agencies and there was no heightened military presence after the report.This was revealed by former Captain of the Defence Force Gary Griffith as he gave evidence in the commission of enquiry into the coup at the Caribbean Court of Justice in Port-of-Spain yesterday.Griffith, National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, was a soldier in the army at the time, fresh out of the Sandhurst Military Academy in Britain.He was in charge of securing Camp Ogden, the military's command centre at Long Circular during the coup d'etat.Griffith, while noting that the police and army's performance in quelling the uprising and restoring order to T&T was second to none, revealed what he called a number of military operational blunders.Brigadier Ralph Brown, a commanding officer during the coup d'etat, while giving evidence earlier this week, said he had no intelligence before the event that the Muslimeen were a threat to national security.According to Griffith, soldiers stationed at the post near the Jamaat compound to prevent them from encroaching on state land would have been told that the organisation was a threat to national security.
"If they were not a national threat, the government would not have used the post powerful force to prevent citizens from trying to squat," he said."They were clearly seen as a group that intended to rise above the law."Griffith said while soldiers reported seeing a heightened vehicle presence at the Jamaat's compound, there was no extra military personnel assigned to the post."It seems the information was never passed on to intelligence agencies," he said."There was no heightened military presence on the compound." Griffith, holding a completely different position to Brigadier Brown, told the commission that the military had no strategic plan for an event like the attempted overthrow.He described the handling of it as a "major operational blunder" which resulted in many shortcomings.Brown had held that the insurrection was a major emergency and in the heat of the crisis, against military procedure, soldiers were called to go directly to the command centre at Camp Ogden and not their bases. From Camp Ogden, they were deployed to the Red House and Trinidad and Tobago Television which the insurgents had seized and were holding people hostage.On a scale of one to five, Brown gave the army a four for performance.Griffith maintained, however, that even in the most severe circumstances you must abide by certain fundamental military principles.Listing them for the commission, he said there must be an immediate briefing by commanding officers to those in charge under them.
"Bypassing a chain of command is a recipe for disaster," he noted."You must ensure, through operational orders, that every officer is aware of his role and function."He further added that "you must ensure that mechanisms are there for logistics support."Griffith said there was a logistics nightmare in terms of communication between the Support Services Battallion, responsible to distributing supplies to the First Battallion, the troop out on the battlefront.He said there were problems with transportation and sending weapons, supplies and food to officers posted outside the Red House and TTT.Griffith blamed this on officers going straight to Ogden instead of remaining at their bases.He said a strong "rear echelon" was crucial in supporting the First Battallion, while its officers were engaged in battle.He said officers also need to be given a threat assessment before being deployed to know where the enemy was and where he was stationed.Griffith claimed none of this was done properly.He said officers, junior and senior, and members of the Coast Guard went straight to Ogden, some under orders by Brigadier Brown.He said many of them went out without proper uniforms to distinguish them from the enemy, and without being properly briefed.He said this could have resulted in serious consequences. For instance, hundreds of soldiers were focused on the Red House where several parliamentarians were held hostage."The enemies could have left TTT and killed soldiers from behind," Griffith said.He insisted that two officers with GPMGs (general purpose machine guns) could have contained 50 insurgents in the Red House.He also criticised the location of Ogden, saying it was difficult to secure it because the enemy could have penetrated the base from the mountains behind or from the roadway at the front.Moving the command centre to the Hilton Trinidad was also a bad idea since a military or police location and not a hotel was the best option.Griffith called for the establishment of a national military training academy to train soldiers in modern counter-revolutionary warfare to prevent a repeat of July 1990.