The man who ut­tered the now in­fa­mous state­ment "Who is your leader," for­mer Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Joseph Toney be­came the third of­fi­cial of the Arthur NR Robin­son Gov­ern­ment to give ev­i­dence be­fore the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the 1990 At­tempt­ed Coup staged by 114 mem­bers of the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen on Ju­ly 27 of that year.

Toney, who was at the time con­tribut­ing to the de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, was

ques­tioned by lead coun­sel Avory Sinanan SC. The fol­low­ing are ex­tracts of Toney's tes­ti­mo­ny.

Coun­sel: While you were mak­ing your con­tri­bu­tion what hap­pened?

Toney: There is a TV clip­ping which tells every­thing. Whilst mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion about a quar­ter to six, I heard what sound­ed to me like pans clang­ing against the pave­ment out­side and I thought it was a va­grant whom I saw ear­li­er on when I was com­ing to the Par­lia­ment. He was kick­ing around some pans out­side the Par­lia­ment. I thought it was him car­ry­ing on again.

So I heard this noise, this clang­ing of pans and then I heard it was get­ting clos­er and clos­er to me. At that time I turned around and I watched. I saw men burst in­to the Par­lia­ment dressed in army uni­form and they were shout­ing and shoot­ing at the ceil­ing and all around. I thought it was a mil­i­tary take-over and then as they got clos­er to me they kept run­ning and shoot­ing. They start­ed these Mus­lim chants Al­lah U Ak­bar! Al­lah U Ak­bar! And then I re­alised that it was maybe Mus­lim men dressed in mil­i­tary garb. They shot up the place and they called on every­body to get down, get down.

Coun­sel: At that time did you think it was the Mus­limeen?

Toney: No, I didn't think it was the Mus­limeen but I knew that there was a Mus­lim con­nec­tion be­cause of what they were say­ing.

Coun­sel: At that time you were act­ing Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness?

Toney: I was.

Coun­sel: And there­fore you oc­cu­pied the first seat on the Gov­ern­ment bench­es?

Toney: Yes, to the right of the Speak­er. I got down and we were told to keep your heads down and they con­tin­ued to shoot up the place. Be­fore we got down they were shout­ing "Where Rob­bie? Where Sel­lo? Where the IMF man..." They were shout­ing all the time that "the NAR Gov­ern­ment wicked, Robin­son wicked," we take away the CO­LA, we take away the ten per cent (re­duc­tion in salary), we're tak­ing in­struc­tions from the IMF, we're not run­ning the coun­try well, they eh want to give we the med­i­cine, they take away we land.

Coun­sel: In re­la­tion to the com­plaint about the med­i­cine, you knew what they were talk­ing about?

Toney: No, but af­ter­wards I got to find out ... when I came from the Red House, they, I am told, got a con­tain­er-load of med­i­cine to be dis­trib­uted as ,they said, for com­mu­ni­ties and there was some prob­lem with it com­ing in­to the coun­try via the Cus­toms. That was what they were re­fer­ring to as far as I gath­ered.

Coun­sel: So they were ty­ing up peo­ple and mak­ing these ac­cu­sa­tions ?

Toney: Yes.

Coun­sel: Could you con­tin­ue from there?

Toney: Well, they were mak­ing sure they had every­thing un­der con­trol and then the shoot­ing start­ed from out­side-peo­ple start­ed shoot­ing-I don't know who it was and af­ter this they sin­gled out both Mr Robin­son and Mr Richard­son for spe­cial treat­ment be­cause they took them aside and I heard slaps and thuds-and, in par­tic­u­lar, Mr Richard­son was bawl­ing, "Oh God, all you hit­ting me, all you hit­ting me, doh hit me"-you were hear­ing these slaps and what seemed to be like a heavy in­flict­ing of blows on the two of them. I didn't hear Mr Robin­son say­ing any­thing. He was silent but Mr Richard­son was in some pain.

Coun­sel: Well af­ter the in­va­sion did you see first of all the uni­formed po­lice­men again?

Toney: Well, I couldn't raise my head.

Coun­sel: At any oth­er time dur­ing your stay at the Red House ...

Toney: No, no, no, I didn't see any po­lice­men.

Coun­sel: What hap­pened af­ter that?

Toney: There was some shoot­ing, you had the shoot­ing com­ing from out­side and they (Mus­limeen in­side) were re­spond­ing and then hav­ing beat­en Mr Robin­son they then asked him to tell the forces out­side to back off be­cause if they con­tin­ued shoot­ing, they would en­dan­ger every­one. They gave him this walkie talkie (ra­dio set) and told him tell the forces out­side to back off, words to that ef­fect, be­cause they (Mus­limeen) are in con­trol now and if they (State forces) con­tin­ued like this, many peo­ple will be killed.

And I heard Mr Robin­son say these peo­ple are tor­tur­ers and mur­der­ers and vagabonds and "At­tack with full force" and then of course I heard a gun­shot and Mr Robin­son start­ed bawl­ing in pain. "You all have shot me. I am go­ing to die. I am pre­pared to die for my coun­try, you all are go­ing to kill me. I am go­ing to die for my coun­try" and he kept re­peat­ing that on and on and on. And I think they tried to stop him from say­ing those words.

I heard the voice of Dr Em­manuel Ho­sein say­ing "All you don't do that, all you don't do that. If all you do that all you will kill him." And I got the im­pres­sion that they backed off. But he con­tin­ued moan­ing and groan­ing "I will die for my coun­try, I will die for my coun­try."

Coun­sel: And at around what time ...?

Toney: I will say that would have been prob­a­bly about be­tween 6.30 and 7.00 o'clock.

Coun­sel: As ear­ly as that?

Toney: Okay, that would have been ear­ly. Maybe be­tween 7.30 and 8.00 o'clock... around that time. Par­lia­ment was sched­uled to over at six o'clock. We were plan­ning to go to a foot­ball game and this thing hap­pened and by the time they took to bring things un­der con­trol it would have been about an hour or so. So that would have been be­tween 7.30 and 8.30.

Coun­sel: Was the at­ti­tude of your cap­tors to­ward you ag­gres­sive and hos­tile?

Toney: Of course, of course, of course. Clear­ly their in­tent was to hu­mil­i­ate us and kill us if nec­es­sary. There was fire. They were all armed. Some of them had two guns and they were point­ed to us at all times. Their in­tent was bad.