Yvonne Ba­boolal

Dur­ing the at­tack on the Red House in the 1990 in­sur­rec­tion, po­lice of­fi­cers on the out­side re­fused to take or­ders from then per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Ray Fer­nan­dez. "Who the hell is you? Robin­son bet­ter off dead!" of­fi­cers were heard telling Fer­nan­dez on a walkie talkie. At the time, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, in­clud­ing then prime min­is­ter Arthur NR Robin­son, who was shot, were be­ing held hostage by armed Ja­maat al Mus­limeen in­sur­gents in the Red House. This in­for­ma­tion was re­vealed to the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the Ju­ly 27,1990, at­tempt­ed takeover of the coun­try, by for­mer NAR gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and Red House hostage, Ray­mond Pal­lack­d­har­rysingh at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

"We nev­er had any hope that the (pro­tec­tive) forces would try to save the hostages," Pal­lack­d­har­rysingh told the com­mis­sion. "I think the po­lice had no sym­pa­thy for us." He said he re­mem­bered then min­is­ter, Joseph Toney, giv­ing this mes­sage: "This is a very dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion. If you get out alive, please tell my wife the in­sur­ance pol­i­cy is in the trunk of my care. Make use of it." Pal­lack­d­har­rysingh said then army com­man­der, Joe Theodore, had the T&T Reg­i­ment grad­u­al­ly take over from the po­lice un­til they had com­plete con­trol. He fur­ther dis­closed that, for sev­er­al months pre­ced­ing the at­tempt­ed coup, there were ru­mours on the grapevine that guns were com­ing in­to T&T and that Ja­maat al Mus­limeen mem­bers were train­ing in re­mote parts of the coun­try. "How did they re­al­ly suc­ceed?" Pal­lack­d­har­rysingh, who joined the UNC af­ter he was fired from the NAR gov­ern­ment by Robin­son, asked. "There must have been a lapse in se­cu­ri­ty," he said, an­swer­ing his own ques­tion.

He said Robin­son sent for him one day af­ter he had ex­pelled Bas­deo Pan­day, Kelvin Ram­nath, Trevor Su­dama and John Humphrey from the Gov­ern­ment. "I told him it was bet­ter to seek rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, that if he fired them, the Gov­ern­ment would fall," Pal­lack­d­har­rysingh said. "I could sense the an­noy­ance on his face and he told me the meet­ing was over." Pal­lack­d­har­rysingh said he lat­er heard that a fifth par­lia­men­tar­i­an was to be fired and read in the news­pa­per that it was him. Com­mis­sion chair­man, Sir David Sim­mons, said Pal­lack­d­har­rysingh's ev­i­dence was the kind the com­mis­sion was look­ing for.

He will re­turn to give ev­i­dence at a date to be fixed.