Joel Julien

The cir­cum­stances which led to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup were com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from what is tak­ing place in the coun­try now, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr said yes­ter­day as he re­spond­ed to a warn­ing by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to cit­i­zens of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an­oth­er coup d'etat against the Gov­ern­ment sim­i­lar to in­sur­rec­tion by the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen.

How­ev­er, Bakr said the coun­try was cur­rent­ly "sat­u­rat­ed with dis­con­tent" be­cause of our cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion and is a pow­der keg ready to ex­plode.

"If you have a house and a man strikes a match and throws it in the house that match is not go­ing to do any­thing, you can out that match quick­ly, but if you sat­u­rate the whole of the house with kerosene or gas or some­thing, from the time you strike that match and throw it the whole house will burn down be­cause the kerosene has sat­u­rat­ed the place. The state we reach now, one grain of match can set the whole prairie on fire," Bakr said.

On Ju­ly 27, 1990, Bakr led 113 in­sur­gents in a failed coup to over­throw the then gov­ern­ment of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) led by Arthur NR Robin­son. Twen­ty-four peo­ple died dur­ing the siege.

"The gen­e­sis of 1990 is a whole dif­fer­ent thing from po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions or any­thing. It had noth­ing to do with that," Bakr said.

Bakr said the se­cu­ri­ty forces of the State and the Ja­maat were in con­tin­u­ous con­flict be­fore the at­tempt­ed coup be­cause of the shoot­ing death of WPC Bernadette James un­der mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances, days af­ter she con­fessed to him that she wit­nessed a drug trans­ac­tion in­volv­ing high-rank­ing of­fi­cials, as well as a stand-off over the Mu­cu­rapo Road prop­er­ty.

"They want­ed to force a con­flict, a mil­i­tary con­flict, and so they got a mil­i­tary so­lu­tion. That had noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics. It was us against them and they not obey­ing the rule of the law which is an­ar­chy," Bakr said.

Bakr said Row­ley should tell the coun­try what in­for­ma­tion he has which would have led him to make such a state­ment.

"If Row­ley said that, then he needs to tell the pop­u­la­tion what in­for­ma­tion he has that will al­low him to say that, so that peo­ple can take their own pre­cau­tions be­cause at the end of the day every man is re­spon­si­ble for his own se­cu­ri­ty," Bakr said.

"He knows what I don't know. I don't know about any­thing, but what hap­pened in 1990, we didn't run in any bank, we didn't try to rob any­body that has noth­ing to do with this sit­u­a­tion, it was not about some­body want­i­ng to take over the coun­try for po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy. The gen­e­sis was en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent so he knows what he is talk­ing about, I don't know," Bakr said.

Present day ter­ror at­tack will not fol­low 1990 mould

Dau­rius Figueira the au­thor of Ji­had in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ju­ly 27, 1990 yes­ter­day told the Sun­day Guardian that if a ter­ror­ist at­tack is to take place in this coun­try now it would not fol­low the lines of what took place in 1990.

"We have to sep­a­rate an at­tempt­ed coup a la Ju­ly 27, 1990, from a present day ter­ror at­tack be­cause any­body in Trinidad and To­ba­go who would at­tempt a ter­ror at­tack on Trinidad and To­ba­go out of Is­lam­ic ex­trem­ism will not adopt the method­ol­o­gy of the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen in 1990," Figueira said.

When Bakr led the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, gun­men stormed the on­ly tele­vi­sion sta­tion TTT and the Par­lia­ment where prime min­is­ter Robin­son and oth­er MPs were held hostage for six days be­fore a sur­ren­der was ne­go­ti­at­ed via an amnesty, lat­er de­clared to be in­valid.

"They don't be­lieve in the need for that (kind of at­tack), the Ja­maat had a spe­cif­ic need and that is why they chose that method, their po­si­tion to­day es­pe­cial­ly those who abide by the teach­ings of the Is­lam­ic State is that you have to in­flict max­i­mum civil­ian ca­su­al­ties which then rocks the po­lit­i­cal struc­ture," Figueira said.

"Just look at what they did in Paris and in Brus­sels and that will il­lus­trate their agen­da, so if we have any at­tack in Trinidad and To­ba­go we have to ex­pect that it will be an at­tack that would tar­get civil­ians in a weak and ac­cept­able en­vi­ron­ment and to car­ry out an at­tack that is es­pe­cial­ly vi­o­lent, blood let­ting, where the me­dia of the world will car­ry it. They want max­i­mum im­pact lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly," he said.

Figueira said that is why Car­ni­val would have been a "ma­jor tar­get."

"Re­mem­ber, they (ex­trem­ists) will have mul­ti­ple ways of do­ing it so you can very well have Im­pro­vised Ex­plo­sive De­vices (IED) placed at the side of the road etc, but more im­por­tant­ly we must un­der­stand in a sit­u­a­tion like that the lat­est tech­nique they use now is IEDs com­bined with sui­cide bombers," Figueira said.

"So that is what we have to look at, the use of sui­cide bombers in con­junc­tion with IEDs. So they will plant those ide­al­ly in any area where the crowd is thick from wall to wall on a street and then the sui­cide bombers will go in­to the crowd and that is how they will det­o­nate it."

'You can nev­er have 100 per cent readi­ness for the meth­ods they are us­ing'

Figueira said no mat­ter what, a coun­try could nev­er be 100 per cent ready for that kind of at­tack.

"First thing we have to ac­cept is that you can nev­er have 100 per cent readi­ness for the meth­ods they are us­ing be­cause in or­der to pick up on it you have to have some­body from with­in com­ing to tell you, or they are be­ing very slop­py in the way they are do­ing it. So that is the first thing if we want to ex­pect 100 per cent readi­ness that is pie in the sky."

Days be­fore this year's Car­ni­val, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) an­nounced that there was a threat to dis­rupt the cel­e­bra­tions. In all, 15 peo­ple were held and even­tu­al­ly re­leased.

Figueira said the TTPS han­dled the sit­u­a­tion in text­book counter-ter­ror­ism tech­nique.

"What hap­pened pri­or to Car­ni­val was ratch­et­ing up the lev­el of en­gage­ment, so you see what you must un­der­stand is when you go and pick up peo­ple you send a mes­sage out, and they (po­ten­tial ter­ror­ists) now have to sit down and won­der if they are next and this puts them on the back foot.

"What it does, is it does not give them free space to plan, to op­er­ate and to ex­e­cute," he said.

Figueira said in counter-ter­ror­ism cir­cles this tech­nique is known as "beat­ing the brush."

"It fol­lowed the play book, the meth­ods used fol­lowed the play book," Figueira said.

Counter-Ter­ror­ism Unit need­ed

For­mer Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Garvin Heer­ah said as chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil the PM would be priv­i­leged to cer­tain in­for­ma­tion that would and can prompt his state­ments.

"Our armed forces are quite equipped both in train­ing and re­sources to ad­dress threats and at­tacks of cer­tain lev­els. What is a cause for con­cern, how­ev­er, is our fail­ure to co­or­di­nate na­tion­al op­er­a­tions. Util­is­ing the tech­nol­o­gy and the in­ter-agency col­lab­o­ra­tive frame­work. Our ca­pac­i­ties re­main siloed with­out an in­te­grat­ed ap­proach. In a cri­sis such as a ter­ror at­tack, this could very well work against us," Heer­ah said.

He called for the es­tab­lish­ment of a Counter-Ter­ror­ism Cen­tre/Unit.

"To ef­fec­tive­ly deal with Counter-ter­ror­ism T&T needs to es­tab­lish a sep­a­rate Counter-Ter­ror­ism Cen­tre/Unit. A ded­i­cat­ed es­tab­lished plat­form with a high­ly trained re­sponse force. An in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ty with tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven re­sources. This cen­tre must be mod­elled against a back­drop of in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice and be able to look at Counter-ter­ror­ism holis­ti­cal­ly, in­volv­ing for­eign lan­guage and bor­der con­trol mea­sures. That we should know, such plan­ning and pol­i­cy-dri­ven strate­gies are all part of the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Con­cept," he said.

Heer­ah al­so warned that the au­thor­i­ties need to pay at­ten­tion to the the in­crease of young men and women be­ing re­cruit­ed and now be­ing iden­ti­fied as ji­hadists here.

Imam to PM: Act on ev­i­dence

Mus­lim Cler­ic Imam Rasheed Karim has called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to act on any ev­i­dence that he may have on ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties in T&T.

Karim, head of the Masjid ul Furquaan, was speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

“If the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T has that type of ev­i­dence I think sure­ly he should act up­on that ev­i­dence.”

Karim said the Qu'ran (Is­lam­ic holy scrip­tures) dic­tates the way in which peo­ple should live and con­duct their af­fairs. He said the Qu'ran preach­es peace and not ha­tred or ter­ror­ism. He said the en­tire Qu'ran should be read in con­text. He said “A lot of peo­ple read Qu'ran as a cafe­te­ria book in the sense we read on­ly what we want knowl­edge of.”

Karim said ter­ror­ism was be­ing used as a scape­goat glob­al­ly by gov­ern­ments that are not per­form­ing. He said when peo­ple’s rights are tram­pled up­on they may chose to rise up. “Who next?" he asked. "We have seen that the Gov­ern­ment had done cer­tain raids and they have not as much as col­lect­ed a nail clip­per.”

—Shas­tri Boodan