Yvonne Ba­boolal

Blow up the Red House and kill every­body.

That was one of the op­tions of Brigadier Ralph Brown for crush­ing the Ju­ly 1990 up­ris­ing by Ja­maat al Mus­limeen in­sur­rec­tion­ists.For him, an amnesty was out of the ques­tion, Brown told the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the 1990 coup at­tempt while giv­ing ev­i­dence at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Brown, who was in charge of the reg­i­ment dur­ing the up­ris­ing said:

"I heard the word amnesty. I want­ed no part of that. From a mil­i­tary point of view the sit­u­a­tion was con­tained."The brigadier al­so cleared the air about the army's al­leged sup­port for the in­sur­gents, stat­ing he nev­er got those in­struc­tions from his su­pe­ri­ors."Ne­go­ti­ate a so­lu­tion out of the sit­u­a­tion, storm the build­ing or blow up the Red House and kill every­body," Brown said, list­ing his op­tions at the time.How­ev­er, the brigadier lat­er told the com­mis­sion the op­tion to blow up the Red House "was not an op­tion at all."It would have in­volved too much killing," he said.He said his pre­ferred op­tion was to ne­go­ti­ate but said the army had plans to storm the Red House.

He said British-trained Ma­jor Derek, op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer, start­ed mak­ing plans to storm the Red House and Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT), where Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters and civil­ians were be­ing held hostage by the Mus­limeen. That, he re­called, in­clud­ed get­ting a lay­out of the Red House from then act­ing pres­i­dent, Em­manuel Carter, who worked in the build­ing for many years and knew every cor­ri­dor and of­fice. He added: "We sent for a mil­i­tary draughts­man. I had to okay the plan. We were do­ing a sim­i­lar ex­er­cise at TTT with Bernard Pan­tin (for­mer broad­cast­er)."Sub­se­quent to the com­ple­tion of the ex­er­cise we be­came aware that an amnesty doc­u­ment was signed by Carter."

No army sup­port

Brown said he was high­ly in­censed when he heard leader of the up­ris­ing, Yasin Abu Bakr, telling the na­tion on TTT af­ter they had seized the sta­tion that the army was on their side.He said: "I didn't think for a mo­ment that was so. I am a Chris­t­ian. I wor­ship at the All Saints' An­gli­can Church."I knew that one or two sol­diers were Mus­lims and wor­shiped at the mosque (Ja­maat's)."Brown said he es­cort­ed Pan­tin and a TTT crew to Cum­ber­land Hill where the tele­vi­sion trans­mit­ters were lo­cat­ed."We shot off the lock with an SLR ri­fle and the tech­ni­cians cut off the TTT trans­mis­sion and hooked up the out­side broad­cast," he added.Ad­dress­ing the na­tion then, Brown said the Gov­ern­ment had not fall­en, that the army did not col­lab­o­rate with the rebels or had any in­ten­tion to.

He as­sured the na­tion there were Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters on the out­side who were tak­ing charge, he re­called."We said the army was in charge and will take con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion," Brown told the com­mis­sion.He al­so re­fut­ed al­le­ga­tions, made by Brigadier Carl Al­fon­so, while giv­ing ev­i­dence ear­li­er, that he (Brown) did not con­tact him from the com­mand base at Camp Og­den for four days.Al­fon­so, com­mand­ing of­fi­cer of the Sup­port and Ser­vices Bat­tal­ion (SSB) at the time, said he was ba­si­cal­ly left in the dark at Teteron. Brown said: "Ei­ther me or a staff of­fi­cer would have com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the CO of SSB."I have ev­i­dence with him com­mu­ni­cat­ing with one of his ju­niors at Camp Og­den."

Not­ing that of"Al­fon­so would have been privy to in­struc­tions giv­en to Col Hugh Vi­dale (com­mand­ing of­fi­cer of the first bat­tal­ion in charge of Camp Og­den)." He fur­ther de­nied he called Al­fon­so af­ter the sur­ren­der of the Mus­limeen and told him to find some­where for them to stay and hung up.Al­fon­so, in giv­ing ev­i­dence, said he asked Brown where to put the Mus­limeen and he was told you are the ... com­mand­ing of­fi­cer."Not­ing that he was "ap­palled" at this, Brown told the com­mis­sion:

"Col Joe Theodore (then chief of De­fence Staff) and I would have to be two mad­men to say to the SSB CO we are send­ing 114 Mus­limeen, find some­where for them to stay and not give in­struc­tions on where to put them."The de­ci­sion to put them in Fish­eries (in Ch­aguara­mas) was made by Theodore and my­self (not Al­fon­so)."Adding he took is­sue with news­pa­per re­ports on Al­fon­so's crit­i­cism of the army's per­for­mance dur­ing the up­ris­ing, Brown asked the com­mis­sion to de­fend the ho­n­our of his sol­diers when he next gave ev­i­dence.Brown and mem­bers of the Ja­maat are ex­pect­ed to give ev­i­dence to­day.