Richard Lord

All prop­er­ty owned by the Yasin Abu Bakr-led Ja­maat al Mus­limeen, which at­tempt­ed to over­throw the elect­ed Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion Gov­ern­ment on Ju­ly 27, 1990, are to be sold on Tues­day–the 20th an­niver­sary of the bloody in­sur­rec­tion.

The at­tempt­ed coup claimed more than 22 lives and caused mil­lions of dol­lars in dam­age to state prop­er­ty, in­clud­ing Po­lice Head­quar­ters on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan made the dis­clo­sure dur­ing a pub­lic meet­ing of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship at Cau­ra Junc­tion, El Do­ra­do, on Wednes­day night.

Al­most 20 years ago, dur­ing a reg­u­lar sit­ting of the Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Ju­ly 27, Abu Bakr and mem­bers of the Mus­limeen stormed the Par­lia­ment Build­ing and held then prime min­is­ter ANR Robin­son and oth­er MPs hostage. Many build­ings were de­stroyed dur­ing the six-day siege. The in­sur­gents were sub­se­quent­ly freed by the court af­ter se­cur­ing an amnesty signed by then act­ing Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Carter.

Af­ter pro­longed le­gal bat­tles, the Mus­limeen were or­dered to pay mil­lions of dol­lars in dam­ages to the State. The sale would be done by pub­lic auc­tion by the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, Ram­lo­gan said. "On Ju­ly 27, 2010, the first ad­ver­tise­ment in all three dai­ly news­pa­pers to put up for sale every sin­gle prop­er­ty owned by the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen... every sin­gle prop­er­ty owned by the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen is be­ing put up for sale to com­pen­sate the State for the loss and dam­age suf­fered to the prop­er­ty of the State, dur­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup," he said.

"If those prop­er­ties are not pur­chased by any­one, rest as­sured, the State has use for them." Ram­lo­gan said the Prime Min­is­ter was not on­ly a mag­net of uni­ty in T&T, but " a heal­ing pow­er" and a pos­i­tive in­spi­ra­tion for him to get the job done. "We will not be­tray you," he told sup­port­ers. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for com­ment on the pro­posed sale of the Mus­limeen's prop­er­ty, Abu Bakr said cit­i­zens will know what ac­tion he in­tends to take to pre­vent the sale of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's prop­er­ties in T&T in due course. "When the time comes, we will see what will hap­pen, we will see," he said. He al­so de­nied that any po­lice of­fi­cer had ques­tioned him on any threat to the life of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.