Yvonne Ba­boolal

Dur­ing the Ju­ly 1990 up­ris­ing the Coast Guard set up road­blocks to de­fend its base at Hart's Cut Bay from rogue el­e­ments in the army. "It was the sin­gle fac­tor that guid­ed the strat­e­gy," then com­mand­ing of­fi­cer of the Coast Guard Richard Kelshall told the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the at­tempt­ed coup at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Kelshall, one of an ar­ray of law en­force­ment per­son­nel giv­ing ev­i­dence in this ses­sion, said there were ru­mours the army was sup­port­ing the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen in­sur­gents, led by Imam Yasin Abu Bakr. He said: "When I heard the army was with Bakr I took pre­ven­ta­tive ac­tion. "I was in­flu­enced by 1970," he added, re­call­ing his ex­pe­ri­ence when the army, led by Raf­fique Shah, staged a mutiny in 1970.

Hart's Cut Bay was not at­tacked by any rogue el­e­ments in the army in 1990. De­spite crit­i­cisms from sev­er­al wit­ness­es, in­clud­ing Capt Gary Grif­fith, that the army blun­dered, Kelshall em­pha­sised, how­ev­er, how well sol­diers per­formed in quelling the in­sur­rec­tion. Asked by com­mis­sion­er East­lyn McKen­zie how he rat­ed the army's per­for­mance, Kelshall said: "They won the match. "In a foot­ball game who makes the most goals wins the match. They won," he said, gen­er­al­ly dis­miss­ing op­er­a­tional blun­ders. Kelshall fur­ther dis­closed if he had to choose a hero of the at­tempt­ed takeover cri­sis, it would be Joseph Theodore, Chief of De­fence Staff at the time. He said: "If I had to pin a hero, it would be Joe Theodore... to han­dle such a ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion and to car­ry out the ne­go­ti­a­tions, which were ex­cel­lent­ly done...

"Did we win? The sit­u­a­tion came out right in the end. How we got there is not im­por­tant. The coun­try owes a ter­ri­ble debt of grat­i­tude to the reg­i­ment." Kelshall heaped more prais­es on the solid­ers whom he said dis­played in­cred­i­ble "fire dis­ci­pline" dur­ing the hostage cri­sis. He said: "There were sol­diers with live am­mu­ni­tion all over Port-of-Spain. The or­der went out to hold their fire (when the Mus­limeen were sur­ren­der­ing) and they did. It was in­cred­i­ble fire dis­ci­pline. All it would have tak­en was one hot­head (to mess things up). "The world and I felt the T&T Reg­i­ment per­formed im­mac­u­late­ly at the time."

Kelshall, high­light­ing some of the con­fu­sion in the army short­ly af­ter the an­nounce­ment of the at­tempt­ed over­throw of the Gov­ern­ment said he was ac­tu­al­ly fired up­on when he first went to Camp Og­den, the army's com­mand cen­tre. He said he went to Camp Og­den around 7.30 am on Ju­ly 28, one day af­ter the up­ris­ing. Kelshall said one of the Coast Guard's role was to sup­port the army. He added: "I had gone through the fear and des­per­a­tion the night be­fore and ar­rived there with a clear mind. "When I got there, there was a large quan­ti­ty of sol­diers milling around and to my great sur­prise I came un­der fire."