TT: The things that go on in a mosque

Even as law enforcement authorities continue to trace a significant number of violent crimes back to No.1 Mucurapo Road and splinter groups associated with the Jamaat al Muslimeen, a former Police Commissioner has admitted to insider information from slain gangland boss, Mark Guerra, of instructions to Muslimeen soldiers to engage in acts of criminal activity.

Ex-police chief Jules Bernard, in an interview with the Sunday Express, said Guerra, a former top lieutenant of Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr, admitted in conversations with the police to instructions being issued to Muslimeen troops from "inside" No.1 to "commit robberies and raid drug dens".

"Guerra told me they were committing crimes on instructions from inside the mosque," said Bernard of the man identified as a major crime figure by the authorities, and who campaigned for the ruling PNM in marginal constituencies in the run-up to the last general election.

Bernard said the Libya-trained Guerra, who had a long history of criminal complaints, arrests and outstanding charges- ranging from attempted murder, possession of guns and ammunition to malicious wounding-admitted to his involvement in armed robberies, shootings and drug-related activities.

But the man who campaigned at the side of Prime Minister Patrick Manning in the 2002 elections and who was questioned in connection with the 1989 shooting of the official car of then president, Noor Hassanali, stopped short of providing specific details to the police, according to Bernard.

Guerra, who was rewarded with a plum post in the Government-run Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) after the 2002 poll, spoke in "general terms" of his criminal exploits, according to Bernard, who said the police had the information, "not the evidence".

He said law enforcement efforts to nail members of the Muslimeen and its former allies were frustrated by witnesses turning up dead, some who were intimidated into recanting statements or who developed sudden bouts of amnesia, and still others who migrated or simply disappeared.

He said more often than not, by the time indictable offences involving associates of No.1 reached the courts, the State's case was in shambles, with missing or reluctant witnesses and the inevitable outcome of accused men walking free.

Last October, a Sunday Express investigation documented the involvement of a high 42 per cent or 48 members of the 114 original coup-makers, including Bakr, in post-1990 charges, ranging from murder through attempted murder and conspiracy to murder, to kidnapping, extortion, narcotics trafficking and possession of guns and ammunition.

Read the rest. ANR was right. That sonofabitch Yasin Abu Bakr and his men should have been lined up against a bloody wall and shot.