Gail Alexan­der

Twen­ty years af­ter failed mur­der charges from the 1990 coup at­tempt, Ja­maat al Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr was again charged with mur­der yes­ter­day. The Mus­limeen leader, 69, is now at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison–with­out bail–await­ing tri­al. A mur­der charge was dropped on Bakr yes­ter­day, af­ter an in­quest at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court in which coro­ner Nali­ni Singh de­liv­ered a rul­ing on the May 1998 death of Mar­aval res­i­dent Is­rael Sam­my. Bakr was the sub­ject of the in­quest. Mur­der and trea­son charges had been filed against Bakr and 113 oth­er Mus­limeen mem­bers in con­nec­tion with the 1990 coup at­tempt.

That was dropped due to the amnesty doc­u­ment in­volved in the coup at­tempt and on which the Privy Coun­cil sub­se­quent­ly ruled. In 2003, Bakr was charged with con­spir­a­cy to mur­der for­mer Ja­maat mem­bers Za­ki Aubai­da and Sal­im Rasheed. This was dropped. Bakr al­so has charges on oth­er pend­ing court mat­ters. In yes­ter­day's mur­der charge de­vel­op­ment, Bakr's ar­rest in the morn­ing and sub­se­quent court ap­pear­ance in the af­ter­noon caused a stir out­side the court on St Vin­cent Street, Port of Spain, as Bakr was tak­en away and lat­er re­turned to the court. As po­lice cor­doned off the court for Bakr's ap­pear­ance on the mur­der charge yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, sev­er­al blocks across town oth­er of­fi­cers were un­der­tak­ing sim­i­lar ac­tion on Nel­son Street. This was out­side South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary School where Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was dis­trib­ut­ing lap­top com­put­ers.

Ear­li­er in the morn­ing, as the first seg­ment of de­vel­op­ments in­volv­ing Bakr un­fold­ed, po­lice pres­ence around the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court im­me­di­ate­ly dou­bled af­ter coro­ner Singh de­liv­ered her rul­ing. Af­ter the mur­der charge was pro­nounced, Bakr was re­moved from the court. Bakr was put in­to a po­lice jeep which had been brought all the way up to the court's en­trance to trans­port him to Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion (CPS for pro­cess­ing. The CPS is lo­cat­ed with­in the old Po­lice Head­quar­ters build­ing on St Vin­cent Street. That struc­ture was the first point de­stroyed by the Mus­limeen around 6 pm on Ju­ly 27, 1090, in the failed coup at­tempt. Dressed in his usu­al white flow­ing out­fit and fez, Bakr ap­peared ex­pres­sion­less as he left the court.

One of Bakr's four wives–In­drani Ma­haraj-Abu Bakr, an at­tor­ney–watched from the court's cor­ri­dor, wear­ing a wor­ried look. Ma­haraj-Abu Bakr was ac­com­pa­nied by three Mus­limeen mem­bers, dressed in black. Un­der ex­treme­ly heavy po­lice pres­ence, ve­hi­cles tak­ing Bakr to the CPS were de­layed briefly by an am­bu­lance tak­ing a stretch­er-bound em­ploy­ee from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice to hos­pi­tal. When traf­fic be­gan mov­ing, the jeep with Bakr and oth­ers–one with po­lice of­fi­cers stand­ing on the run­ning boad, Se­cret Ser­vice style–took off, sirens blar­ing for the ride a few yards down the road to CPS. The jeep bear­ing Bakr head­ed in­to the CPS com­pound via the en­trance to the old Po­lice Head­quar­ters on Sackville Street–the same spot where the Mus­limeen had det­o­nat­ed a car bomb in 1990, herald­ing the coup at­tempt.

Yes­ter­day, when Bakr was re­turned to the court for ar­raign­ment, heavy po­lice pres­ence again swamped the area. Bakr ar­rived at 2.25 pm in a large white jeep with army of­fi­cers packed in along­side him. Af­ter the brief pro­ceed­ings in the court, Bakr was tak­en away in a beige sin­gle-cell pris­on­er's van. Wit­ness­ing his de­par­ture were three of his four wives–his first wife Aneisa, as well Fa­ti­ma and fourth wife In­drani. Al­so present was one of his sons, Fuad. Bakr's third wife Atiyyah was ab­sent. Al­so ab­sent from the af­ter­noon's events were Bakr's Mus­limeen af­fil­i­ates who nor­mal­ly ac­com­pa­ny him. As the prison jeep with Bakr head­ed off, Fa­ti­ma Abu Bakr sent a small wave to her hus­band.

Yes­ter­day, new­ly-ap­point­ed le­gal coun­sel to the up­com­ing in­quiry in­to the events of 1990, se­nior coun­sel Avory Sinanan said Bakr's ar­rest would not im­pact on the in­quiry. The com­mis­sion was re­cent­ly ini­ti­at­ed. Sinanan said com­mis­sion­ers were anx­ious to be­gin work and had, in fact, start­ed with an as­pect of seek­ing mem­o­ran­dum from the pub­lic. He said Win­sure Build­ing was one of the venues un­der con­sid­er­a­tion for the in­quiry.