Author: Angela Potter
Publication: Associated Press
Date: January 16, 2000
Port-of-Spain, Trinidad (AP) - Trinidad's
high court has fined 58 Muslim radicals $2.3 million for bombing the Caribbean
country's police headquarters in a failed 1990 coup.
The coup attempt by the Jamaat Al-Muslimeen
left two dozen people dead and hundreds injured. President Arthur N.R.
Robinson, who was then prime minister, was shot in the leg.
Jamaat members plan to appeal the
ruling. Defense attorney Nathaniel King argued that the group should not
be tried again, since it was already tried in criminal court and let off
because the government had promised members amnesty.
The judgment comes after the government
in September made its first payment of $195,000 to the Jamaat members for
damages to their compound - including a school and medical clinic - following
the coup attempt.
The coup attempt began on July 27,
1990, when Yasin Abu Bakr and 114 rebels set off a car bomb that gutted
the police station in front of Parliament.
They then stormed into the legislature,
spraying bullets, and took over Trinidad and Tobago Television to announce
they had seized control of the oil-rich country of 1.3 million people.
Twenty-four people were killed while
the rebels held Robinson and his Cabinet hostage. They surrendered on Aug.
1.
The government razed the Jamaat's
compound soon afterward. In 1992, a judge ruled the government had acted
illegally. The Jamaat's attorney at the time, Ramesh Maharaj, is now Trinidad's
attorney general.
