home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=90TT2038>
- <title>
- Aug. 06, 1990: World Notes:Trinidad & Tobago
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Aug. 06, 1990 Just Who Is David Souter?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 40
- World Notes
- TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
- Following the Law of Allah
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> At 6 p.m. Friday Trinidad's main television station
- broadcast a startling announcement: "The government has been
- overthrown." The author of the statement was Abu Bakr, the
- fortyish leader of a small Muslim group widely regarded in
- Trinidad as violent outlaws. Bakr's 250 followers had blown up
- the police station in the capital of Port-of-Spain, seized the
- TV station and taken the country's Prime Minister and Cabinet
- hostage in the Parliament building. Declaring that he did not
- recognize "man's law" but only the "law of Allah," Bakr said he
- had seized power "to stop the incest, robbery and drugs, which
- there was no hope for the present regime to stop."
- </p>
- <p> Bakr, a former policeman, founded the militant Jamaat
- al-Muslimeen, or Group of Muslims, six years ago to preach a
- violent but moralistic antidrug message. He and his band are
- said to receive money from Libya. As gunfire and explosions
- rocked the capital overnight, Trinidad's 5,000-member police
- force moved into the streets to restore order. Government
- officials declared that they were in control, but at week's end
- Bakr continued to hold his captives.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-