No one in Trinidad has been charged for joining ISIS
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“He’s a truly spiritual person,” Fuad Abu Bakr told me. He was referring to his father, Yasin, the notorious Trinidadian militant who led the first and only Islamist insurrection ever attempted in a Western democracy. We were standing in front of the mosque his father built at 1 Murcarapo Road on the outskirts of Trinidad and Tobago’s capital city, Port of Spain.
It was early 2016, and I had gone to Trinidad to report on Trinidadian ISIS foreign fighters for The Atlantic. Between 2013 and 2016, some 240 Trinis travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the caliphate, making Trinidad one of the world’s biggest exporters, per capita, of ISIS foreign fighters. I wanted to know how a country famed for calypso, rum and carnival could incubate something so profoundly unTrinidadian.
As a former resident of the country, I’d heard a lot of things about Yasin Abu Bakr, none of which contained the word “spiritual”. He had led the Jamaat al Muslimeen (JAM), a fringe group of black Muslims, with all the tact of an inebriated pitbull — and it was clear there was a connection, albeit tangled and complex, between the JAM radicals of the Nineties and the ISIS fighters who came later.
It was here, 32 years ago this week, on 27 July 1990, outside the mosque where Fuad and I were standing, that Bakr gathered his men for a group prayer and pep-talk. They were armed to the teeth with AK47s, pump-action shotguns and rifles. According to Fuad, Bakr was seeking guidance from God, a sign that he was on the right path: “He was saying to God, ‘if I’m gonna do the wrong thing, then stop me from leaving here’.” But there was no divine obstruction, and Bakr and his men, all 114 of them, sped off into Port of Spain to overthrow the government.
When Bakr and his men left the compound at 1 Murcarapo Road, one group headed for the nation’s parliament in the Red House, and another to Trinidad’s only TV station, Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT). Within hours of laying siege to the parliament, which was still in session, a senior JAM member had shot Prime Minister Arthur Robinson in the leg. A female clerk was killed, and Leo des Vignes, a government MP, was also shot in the leg: he died from blood loss a couple of days later. Robinson, already wounded, was made to lie on the floor with his trousers pulled down.
In the TTT building, where 27 hostages were being held, Bakr was preparing to address the nation. Like the stars of the present-day global jihad, Bakr instinctively understood the power of the media, both as a tool for attracting attention and for spreading propaganda. At just after 7pm, TTT went on air with the most dramatic newscast in its 28-year-old history: “At 6pm this afternoon, the government of Trinidad and Tobago was overthrown,” Bakr coolly told the nation. “The Prime Minister and members of the cabinet are under arrest. We are asking everybody to remain calm. The revolutionary forces are commanded to control the streets. There shall be no looting.”
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Subscribe“it was possible to unleash murderous havoc in Trinidad and more or less get away with it”
Trinidad seems so far away. One of those “other places” that aren’t really like the UK. But why is Trinidad different? And are those differences narrowing?
Well, if the police are weak, government cowers, and civil society is fragmented then Trinidad is exactly what you get.
It is a future that awaits us in the UK. You can see such a fate in Portland and some other West Coast cities of the US. In the UK, police are running away from lone violent attackers attacking a colleague. They’re going to flee anything more sustained and widespread. It is why the violent element of BLM was officially tolerated by the police – they weren’t able to police it so they officially accepted it lest they reveal their weakness and encourage other groups.
Perhaps stuffing the police with humanities graduates wasn’t such a great idea.
Yes, the forces of law and order appear to have been taught to be useless. My sister was burgled before Christmas some years ago and all the officer who came out could say was that it was understandable she should be burgled as the thief would have needed to get presents for his kids. Anyone with some “political” message has been allowed to disrupt life with little hindrance from the police and those guarding our paintings seem to have adopted the same approach in contrast to those on the continent.
Economic crime has been downgraded so that the public is engulfed in a tsunami of scams and fraud that goes largely uninvestigated and unpunished.
But some people think the Great Selfie Riot of 6 January was also a coup attempt, a couple people got killed including a police officer and then on the other hand, it seems like a lot of people were just doing that for a laugh.
These thugs had to capture there television station in order to see themselves on the news. The MSM in the UK and United States willfully choose to televise our riff raff.
It’s probably best to liquidate all wannabe jihadis as soon as they are spotted. Just make them disappear. Hey presto, peace all round and fewer mentalists launching suicide attacks and killing people.
no suprise at all
All that the economically moribund ( aside from tourism and tax haven) Caribbean needs is Islamic extremism! At least they wont be able to blame it on whites and the slave trade…