Raymond Julian, a police officer, ended up at the St Ann's Hospital because of the ordeal he went through during the July1990 attempted overthrow of the government. The experience Julian had was so traumatic that he was never able to work again and was forced to end his career in the police service after the insurrection. He has never fully recovered from his mental breakdown and has been generally unemployed since, living off a reduced early pension and gratuity and National Insurance. Julian, a father of two, yesterday relived the events that would change his life forever at the Commission of Enquiry into the attempted coup at the Caribbean Court of Justice in Port-of-Spain. He was a 43-year old second division officer at the time attached to the Besson Street station, he told the commission. Not rostered, Julian said he was sent as a late replacement to Parliament at the Red House on the fateful afternoon of July 27, 1990.
He had eaten a sandwich and drunk some tea in the morning and did not know he was not going to taste food or even drink water for six days. He had no clue that he was going to be brought to a point where he was sure he was going to be killed. Julian told the commission that no kind of information on the Jamaat al Muslimeen, who staged the insurrection, was passed on to him prior to the event. When the Muslimeen invaded the Red House he ran and hid in a bathroom. Later, he climbed onto the roof of the Red House from the outside wall where he stayed until the Sunday afternoon. Julian said gunshots were fired in his direction all of Friday and Saturday. It rained all the time and he was thoroughly soaked, too, he recalled. Waving his police shirt from a tree branch only brought about more gunfire from whom he believed were police officers on the CLICO building, he said. Sunday afternoon Muslimeen insurgents discovered Julian on the roof in his underwear.
He told them he was a clerk but they said they had found his police hat and slapped him and took him, blindfolded, to the attic where he was tortured. "I felt it was an ordeal I would not live through," he told the commission. He was taken to the Parliament chamber where he saw wounded prime minister Arthur NR Robinson and government minister Selwyn Richardson and other parliamentarians. Julian was kept in the Parliament chamber until Wednesday and given nothing to eat or drink. "I asked for water and was taken to the bathroom. When I bent my head to take the water from the pipe, the captor pushed a gun to the side of my head and I couldn't drink." Tuesday evening Julian heard Bilal Abdullah, leader of the Muslimeen rebels in the Red House telling one of his men to take him to the hospital. "I saw Bilal making a sign as if to kill me but changed his mind."
Julian was released with the other hostages on Wednesday and taken to Camp Ogden. No one offered him anything to eat and he didn't ask. "At that point I didn't feel the hunger," Julian said. It was at Besson Street on Wednesday he had his only meal in six days, a couple slices of bread, he said. Julian discover that his wife and children were preparing a wake for him at home because they heard he died in the Red House. He became an outpatient at the St Ann's Mental Hospital and was deemed medically unfit. He said he was never visited by any senior officer and got no kind of compensation or assistance.