Muslimeen hostage takers asked to leave Parliament with guns

Port-of-Spain: The man who led the Jamaat al Muslimeen at the Parliament's Red House during the 1990 insurrection, had engaged in lengthy discussions with the then Chief of Defence Staff Brigadier Joseph Theodore, demanding that the Muslimeen be allow to leave the Red House and return to the Jamaat with guns to protect themselves.

This is according to evidence given by Theodore at today's sitting of the Commission of Inquiry into the insurrection.

Bilal Abdullah had argued that the State of Emergency could have allowed the Jamaat to be given this special treatment and had actually got the approval of the then National Security Minister, Selwyn Richardson.

 

The Jamaat, Theodore says, wanted to leave with the hostages and their weapons and be escorted by the military to their Mucurapo compound, following which they said they would then have handed over the hostages.

Theodore was admanat this was not going to happen but the Jamaat he says was talking to then Richardson who was in the Red House at the time and wounded after being shot and he had agreed to it.

Theodore, however, was not having it. He told Abdullah what to tell Richardson it was not happening.

Richardson in turned spoke to Theodore and told him the Jamaat only wanted 15 guns to leave the Red House and 10 to leave Trinidad and Tobago Television, where the Jamaat leader Imam Yasin Abu Bakr was commadeering Muslimeen members.

During a conversation with Abdullah, Theodore says Richardson jumped in and told him, it was arranged. Theordore says he then told Abdullah, that he was taking his orders from several government ministers outside of the Red House and not from Richardson, describing Richardson's actions as stupid.

Theodore says the Jamaat made it appear to all the hostages, that it was the military that was preventing their released.

Prime Minister Arthur NR Robinson had already left and all inside the Red House, he says, were now against the army.

Theredore admitted to the commission that he used tactics to wear them out and eventually they agreed to surrender their weapons and be taken to Chaguaramas under military guard.