Thursday, July 20, 2006

Trinidad’s Sheikh of Jihad is Out on Bail Again

The notorious insurrectionary sheikh, Yasin Abu Bakr, is out on bail again in Trinidad. According to Tuesday’s edition of Caribbean Net News:

Sheikh Yasin Abu BakrTrinidad’s Muslimeen leader, 64-year-old Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, after spending almost eight months in jail on charges of sedition, has been granted bail in the sum of TT$400,000.

Bail was granted by Port of Spain high court judge, Justice Herbert Volney after lawyers for Bakr argued their client had a critical health condition and therefore could run the risk of dying if he was made to continue to endure prison conditions.

He had been kept at the state’s maximum security prison in Arouca, east Trinidad. Justice Volney agreed that the Muslimeen leader should be released on medical grounds.

Supporters who greeted their leader said they were thankful to Allah for his release. Imam Bakr faces five counts of sedition and incitement arising out of an EID holiday presentation he made in November last year at his St James Mucurapo Mosque.

This week’s release is a reprise of last year’s events. The photo above was taken in March 2005, when the sheikh was released on bail after the government failed to convict him on a charge of conspiracy to murder.

His earlier brush with incarceration has apparently not convinced him to mend his ways:

It is alleged that at his Mucurapo Mosque during an Eid-ul-Fitr sermon on November 4 last year, Bakr threatened to use violence against the Muslim community in Trinidad, saying there will be a war if rich Muslims did not pay zakaat (a religious tax), which is required by all Muslims and said to be one of the five pillars of Islam - a tax collected to help the poor.

Notice that this was an intramural conflict among Muslims in Trinidad, and seems to involve an element of class warfare. Or maybe just a shakedown operation gone wrong…?

Sheikh Abu Bakr has a history of political violence in Trinidad:

Trinidad and TobagoBakr was also the leader of a failed coup attempt in 1990 in Trinidad. He, together 113 others of his organization, stormed the country’s Parliament and held the then Prime Minister, Arthur N.R. Robinson and other government ministers hostage at gun point for several days. Robinson was also shot and wounded. At least one government minister died during the insurrection.

So now Abu Bakr is enjoying the pleasures of liberty again. I hope Trinidad’s domestic counter-terrorism units are keeping a close eye on him.


Hat tip: Uncle Pavian.

5 comments:

CP said...

One wonders, does Trinidad have a domestic counter-terrorism unit? If so, they don't seem to be very effective, hm?

Baron Bodissey said...

CP -- maybe they got the Muslims to fight each other, hmm? ;)

Anonymous said...

Trinidad doesn't seem to have an actual counter-terrorism unit as far as I've been able to determine. The police do have a blimp, though, which the government thinks is pretty hot stuff.

Wally Ballou said...

Of course, Trinidad also has a very large Hindu community (V.S. Naipaul being the best-known son of this group). I wonder how this affects them. Can't be good.

Anonymous said...

What happened when Sheikh Abu Bakr's followers took over the Red House was, the government waited a few days, then granted them amnesty. After the jihadists stood down, they were rounded up, carted off to the hoosegow, and convicted of high treason. Their convictions were overturned by the Privy Council, which held that the government couldn't go back on the amnesty promise.
The sheikh's current legal troubles are twofold: first, there is the conspiracy to murder his ex-followers. Second, the government is trying to collect the bill for repairing the parliament building after his men shot the place up.
Unfortunately, neither one is a capital offense in the Republic.
As for the East Indian population, they had control of the government and were making serious moves toward reform, but fell to fighting among themselves. The suspicion is that under the Afro-Trinidadian government (which is nominally Christian, but largely corrupt) will start looking like Uganda back in the 1970s.
You're right. This is Very Bad.