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Sunday, May 18, 2025

Police reviewing Bakr tape

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
1345 days ago
20210911

One day af­ter he de­liv­ered a ser­mon dur­ing the Ja­maat Al Mus­limeen's week­ly Jummah at Mu­cu­rapo Road, where he called on the au­thor­i­ties to clean up its act as it re­lates to ed­u­ca­tion, hu­man rights and the on­go­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­cline, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr says he is stand­ing by his words which re­flect the truth.

Dis­miss­ing al­le­ga­tions that ex­cerpts from the ad­dress could be in­ter­pret­ed as in­cite­ful and even in­stiga­tive, he claimed there were mis­chief mak­ers and spin doc­tors al­ways look­ing for hid­den mean­ings and sala­cious head­lines in his words.

Bakr spoke with the Sun­day Guardian at the Ja­maat’s Mu­cu­rapo com­pound on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

When asked whether or not he is in­volved in or aware of any plans to cre­ate civ­il un­rest in T&T as he claimed pres­sure was build­ing, Bakr did not re­ply. In­stead, he coun­tered, “You can’t be sane to ask me that ques­tion.”

Mean­while, hours af­ter the record­ing went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia on Fri­day, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had launched a re­view to de­ter­mine if ac­tion was war­rant­ed.

He con­firmed mem­bers of the TTPS's Le­gal De­part­ment along with Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers had "re­viewed that record­ing to analyse it and very soon, we will de­cide what form of ac­tion to take in re­la­tion to the com­ments made."

Ja­cob said a de­ci­sion should be made by the end of this week­end.

Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed, Ja­cob sought to as­sure the na­tion that, "The TTPS is ac­tu­al­ly ful­ly pre­pared for any neg­a­tive even­tu­al­i­ty." Point­ing to the bonds formed with the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) dur­ing the years, he said this syn­er­gy meant, "We can han­dle any sit­u­a­tion."

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the fears from some mem­bers of the pub­lic who be­lieve there may be more be­hind Bakr's words based on his lead­ing role in the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, Ja­cob added, "All the law en­force­ment agen­cies are work­ing to­geth­er. Our in­tel­li­gence is on top of the game, so in case of any ten­den­cy for any­one to go in a neg­a­tive di­rec­tion, we are go­ing to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion."

The act­ing head said they were us­ing all the ap­pa­ra­tus and tech­nol­o­gy avail­able to them to car­ry out sur­veil­lance to en­sure no en­ti­ty dis­rupts the smooth run­ning of T&T.

Ja­cob said COVID-19 was the com­mon en­e­my right now, and the pub­lic need­ed to come to­geth­er and do the right thing to get vac­ci­nat­ed, as the goal was to shoot down this pan­dem­ic.

Dur­ing Fri­day's ser­mon, Bakr raised con­cerns re­gard­ing a num­ber of is­sues which in­clud­ed the un­fair place­ment of stu­dents who write the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am every year; the cur­ricu­lum con­tent in schools; the in­hu­mane treat­ment met­ed out to pris­on­ers; ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings; and the lack of re­sponse by the Gov­ern­ment to peo­ple who are un­able to prop­er­ly care for their fam­i­lies dur­ing this COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In the hour-long video, Bakr used words such as “war”, and “in­jus­tice”, ask­ing the pub­lic if they “were ready to stand up for what is just.”

These com­ments re­ferred di­rect­ly to the Con­cor­dat and the 20 per cent op­tion for de­nom­i­na­tion­al school prin­ci­pals to se­lect in­com­ing SEA stu­dents. He said this un­fair prac­tice con­tin­ued to be per­pe­trat­ed by peo­ple who se­lect stu­dents based on the pro­fes­sion­al sta­tus of par­ents and their abil­i­ty to help the school progress.

The in­censed Imam al­so chal­lenged le­gal lu­mi­nar­ies to come at him for speak­ing the truth as he promised, “This time, you will see a wave…a wave…you are talk­ing about the COVID-19 does come in waves, well this time you will see a sea com­ing at you. In­jus­tice will not be able to con­tin­ue any­more.”

He said he was on­ly ask­ing for his school and stu­dents to be treat­ed fair­ly by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Re­gard­ing the phys­i­cal con­di­tions in prison which he said has been de­scribed as worse than an­i­mal ac­com­mo­da­tions, Bakr re­it­er­at­ed that bet­ter must be done to treat with the pris­on­ers.

He has so far grant­ed the BBC two in­ter­views dur­ing the last week in which he sought to high­light the in­hu­mane con­di­tions and called for an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be con­duct­ed.

On the is­sue of ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings, he ac­cused po­lice­men of killing black men un­law­ful­ly, to which he said, “It must stop.”

Com­mend­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for his han­dling of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Bakr said he had to be praised for tak­ing the steps he has so far tak­en.

Law As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent com­ments

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, Law As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Sophia Chote, SC said, “The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice must be lis­ten­ing to it (the record­ing) very care­ful­ly and study­ing it to see whether any of­fence has been com­mit­ted.”

Yasin Abu Bakr


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