Parliament to remember 1990 attempted coup on Thursday

PARLIAMENT will hold a wreath-laying ceremony on Thursday to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the July 27, 1990 attempted coup, but details were sketchy on Monday.

Over six days in 1990 dozens of armed members of the Jamaat al Muslimeen led by the late Yasin Abu Bakr seized the Red House in session plus the TTT news station.

They expressed grievances over socio-economic living conditions, the illicit drug trade and a land dispute over the #1 Mucurapo Road, Port of Spain, locale of their mosque, among other things.

However, the attempted coup resulted in 24 people being killed, damage to the Red House, fear among the populace, and the retarding of local businesses some of which premises were looted and burnt out by mobs.

After years of lobbying of past governments by individuals such as former hostage Wendell Eversley, the People's Partnership government (2010-2015) agreed to set up a commission of inquiry into the attempted coup. The 2014 report inquiry blamed the coup for worsening crime in TT afterwards, said the business sector had lost hundreds of millions of dollars during the unrest, and lamented poor police intelligence ahead of the incident.

At a documentary viewing to mark last year's anniversary of the attempted coup, the then president Paula-Mae Weekes had called for a museum to commemorate the coup, even as she lamented that, until then, 15 dead victims remained nameless.

She had declared, "Having worked in the field of criminal law consistently from 1982-1996, I am of the same view, that violent crime, in particular robbery and murder, saw a significant and devastating increase post-1990, and I do not believe that to be a mere coincidence."