Yvonne Ba­boolal

The al­leged mur­der of Woman Po­lice Con­sta­ble Bernadette James af­ter she saw for­mer Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters Sel­wyn Richard­son and Her­bert Atwell in a room at Pi­ar­co Air­port with co­caine on a ta­ble was a ma­jor cause of the 1990 at­tempt­ed over­thow of the Gov­ern­ment by Ja­maat al Mus­limeen in­sur­gents.This was re­vealed by se­nior Ja­maat mem­ber Ja­maal Shabazz as he gave ev­i­dence be­fore the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the coup d'etat, at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.Shabazz, who led the takeover of Ra­dio Trinidad, was one of the 114 in­sur­rec­tion­ists who were charged for the up­ris­ing.Fur­ther, the NAR's al­leged in­dif­fer­ence to the thriv­ing drug trade and sub­se­quent at­tacks on the Ja­maat be­cause of its an­ti-drug cam­paign were oth­er rea­sons that led to the at­tempt­ed coup, Shabazz told the com­mis­sion.

He said in Au­gust 1987, WPC James vis­it­ed the Ja­maat and told se­nior mem­bers that she saw Richard­son, Atwell and Ma­jor Thomp­son in a room at the air­port with the co­caine.In his wit­ness state­ment, Shabazz said Richard­son had some­thing on his fin­ger which he tast­ed and said: "This is the re­al thing but we have to put a lid on this. If we al­low them to be charged, it will be a big scan­dal and a lot of big peo­ple would be af­fect­ed."James said she was chas­tised for en­ter­ing the room and or­dered to leave."Her opin­ion was that a large quan­ti­ty of co­caine was in­ter­cept­ed by the po­lice and it be­longed to an in­flu­en­tial fam­i­ly and moves were afoot to cov­er it up," Shabazz said.

He said James said she was con­fused and feared for her life.In Oc­to­ber 1987, James was sum­moned to do a MOPS (po­lice) op­er­a­tion in Tuck­er Val­ley where she was re­port­ed­ly ac­ci­den­tal­ly shot and killed in a train­ing ex­er­cise.Shabazz said the Ja­maat im­me­di­ate­ly called a meet­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ter."We felt she was mur­dered," he said.The Ja­maat made a de­ci­sion to help stamp out the co­caine trade by go­ing af­ter push­ers on the blocks, Shabazz said."It was caus­ing de­struc­tion in the land," he added.

He said po­lice of­fi­cers with whom Imam Yasin Abu Bakr spoke about it, said "this thing is big­ger than us" and were un­able to help."We fo­cused on the East-West Cor­ri­dor and took a very mil­i­tant stance," Shabazz said."We seized push­ers' drugs and took it to Trinidad & To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion to de­stroy it in front of the me­dia."When we iden­ti­fied a push­er, we would make a raid and bring them in."We threat­ened them and warned them to stop with­in three days or there would be more se­ri­ous con­se­quences."

Shabazz said they used heavy in­tim­i­da­tion and suc­ceed­ed in get­ting most of the push­ers they tar­get­ed to stop the il­le­gal trade."Ag­gres­sive hos­tile per­sons would get some licks," he said.Shabazz said with the ex­cep­tion of Tooks and Bulls and the King broth­ers, who re­tal­i­at­ed with a war on the Mus­limeen, they man­aged to sub­due the drug trade on the East-West Cor­ri­dor.Ques­tioned by lead coun­sel Avory Sinanan, Shabazz de­nied that the Ja­maat was tak­ing the co­caine and sell­ing it.He ad­mit­ted that rogue el­e­ments in the or­gan­i­sa­tion raid­ed blocks on their own for their own ben­e­fit and claimed the Ja­maat al­so had to deal with them.

He said some­time af­ter their war on the co­caine trade, the po­lice be­gan ar­rest­ing Ja­maat mem­bers on trumped-up charges."They in­struct­ed the po­lice to come down on us like a steam roller," Shabazz said."All our meth­ods to stamp out the drug trade were met with harsh re­tal­i­a­tion by the NAR. "They de­stroyed a bak­ery we had in an aban­doned DEWD build­ing in Laven­tille say­ing we were tres­pass­ing."We had in­for­ma­tion from na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty that the army and the po­lice would come to the com­pound and an ac­ci­dent would take place and we would be killed."The NAR tol­er­at­ed the drug trade...The drug sit­u­a­tion def­i­nite­ly led to the at­tempt­ed coup," Shabazz said. (See Page A6)