Yvonne Webb

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the State will not over­turn its de­ci­sion to auc­tion prop­er­ties be­long­ing to the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the auc­tion no­tices were sched­uled to ap­pear in to­day's news­pa­pers, 20 years to the date, when Yasin Abu Bakr led a group of rebels to over­throw the then gov­ern­ment. Po­lice Head­quar­ters and oth­er build­ings in Port-of-Spain were de­stroyed on Ju­ly 27, 1990. Speak­ing yes­ter­day, af­ter cast­ing her vote at the San Fran­cique Hin­du School, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "Those mat­ters are best an­swered by my At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

"My un­der­stand­ing of the law is, that it has to do with a judg­ment of the Supreme Court of Trinidad and To­ba­go and, un­less I am shown oth­er­wise, I am not of the view that it is il­le­gal," she said. Asked whether the ob­jec­tive of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the coup at­tempt was to pros­e­cute wrong­do­ers or seek to record an ac­cu­rate ac­count for his­tor­i­cal pur­pos­es, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was dif­fi­cult to say.

"If I say yes, then I am go­ing in with a closed mind... It means that you would have made up your mind be­fore it comes for­ward," she said. "We have to wait and see what the ev­i­dence is and the ev­i­dence–the facts–would go ac­cord­ing to the law."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she could not say at this time whether the per­son head­ing the in­quiry would be a lo­cal or a for­eign­er, as this was still be­ing worked out.