By Yvonne Baboolal

“The Jamaat is broke. It’s a fact,” Aniysa Jabaar, secretary at the Jamaat al Muslimeen’s secondary school, Mucurapo Islamic College, says.

This statement was made during an interview last Wednesday.

The Jamaat al Muslimeen was named in an alleged plot to blow up the John F Kennedy International Airport in New York City. And last Wednesday, members of the international media found their way into the organisation’s mosque at 1 Mucurapo Road, Port-of-Spain, for a press conference with the group.

United States detective, Robert Addonizio, of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, in a sworn deposition relating to the alleged plot, said four men suspected of being involved in the plot to blow up fuel pipelines feeding the JFK Airport—all Caribbean Muslims, one a Trinidadian—planned to meet with Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr.

It was implied that their purpose was to ask the Muslimeen for help in funding the plot.

Addonizio stated further that the Jamaat, which held members of the T&T Parliament hostage for six days in July, 1990, during an attempted takeover of the country, had “over the past several years, been involved in several murders, kidnappings for ransom, narcotics and weapons trafficking, money laundering and extortion.”

Limited funds

Last Wednesday, however, members of the Muslimeen on the Mucurapo compound were more concerned with legal battles and sourcing funds than with allegations of terrorism.

Jabaar, in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Guardian, said the Islamic group was feeding the poor, spreading the word of Islam, and running its schools on limited funds.

Jabbar said the Muslimeen had no money and that its teachers were struggling to get by on a $3,000 monthly salary, sometimes going without pay during the vacation months of July and August.

She said the kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, with a combined population of 200-odd, got no government assistance, and were running on funds donated by members and “well-wishers.”

“Our teachers are not paid by the Ministry of Education. We try to raise funds to help pay their salaries,” she said.

Posters in the reception area of the compound advertise barbecues to raise funds, and a bill from the Water and Sewerage Authority for $444.50 is pasted on the notice board with a note reminding members to help with payment.

Jabaar said, however, that the week before, ministry officials visited the Jamaat to “see if the schools can be assisted.”

She added: “We’re on the ministry’s school feeding programme. Our students get breakfast and lunches.

“We’re also invited to teachers’ workshops and other such events hosted by the ministry, but we get no funding like the other schools.”

She boasted that the Muslimeen’s schools had a good reputation, and that they get above average passes both in the SEA and O-Level exams.

Because of this, parents took their children out of “normal” schools to send them to the Muslimeen’s, especially for the discipline.

“We get a lot of transfers from Diego Martin Junior Secondary School. We don’t have only Muslim teachers and students.

“We have Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist and Pentecostal students, too.”

Feeding the poor

The Jamaat al Muslimeen spends more than $8,000 a month to feed the poor and homeless in Port-of-Spain.

It’s part of the Dawah Programme, the propagation of Islam, said Muhammad Bilal, also called Brother B, who is in charge of the project.

The Dawah Programme involves feeding and clothing the poor and teaching people about Islam, said white-bearded Brother B, in an interview inside Abu Bakr’s air-conditioned office, finger-counting a string of beads.

Jabaar said the Jamaat prepared as much as 200 lunches sometimes, for distribution on a daily basis.

“The cook tries to do it at a minimum cost. Members sponsor the lunches.

“We go to Woodford Square, Tamarind Square, Duncan Street and Riverside Car Park, where the homeless are usually found, and give them the lunches.

“We go all over T&T: San Fernando, Point Fortin, Mayaro, mostly on weekends, and speak to the people about Islam,” said Brother B on another aspect of the Dawah Programme.

Although the Muslimeen lost several members after the July 27, 1990, attempted coup, many forming their own groups, Brother B claimed his organisation’s membership had grown since then.

“We have about 6,800 members all over the country.”

The Muslimeen has mosques in Palo Seco, Point Fortin, San Fernando and Arima.

He said the Muslimeen no longer took young men off the streets, under their wings, as they did in the past.

“Since we set up the schools, we stopped doing that.”

Legal worries

The implications of being linked to an alleged plot to blow up JFK seemed, last Wednesday, paled in comparison with a Court of Appeal judgment handed down to the Muslimeen, earlier that day, blocking Abu Bakr from taking his case involving Prime Minister Patrick Manning to the Privy Council.

Bakr had filed an application for leave to take to the Privy Council his case compelling Manning to respond to an affidavit which claimed that the Government promised to forgive a $32 million debt owed it by the group in return for muscle power during the 2002 general election.

In a lawsuit brought by Attorney General John Jeremie last year, the State is seeking authorisation to seize and sell properties belonging to Bakr and other members of the Jamaat to recover $32 million for the destruction of the old Police Headquarters in Port-of-Spain by the insurrectionists during the 1990 coup d’etat.

One of Bakr’s homes on Queen’s Park West in Port-of-Spain and 11 other properties in various parts of T&T, including several parcels of land in Couva, Guayaguayare and Marabella, have already been identified for confiscation.

Last Wednesday, after keeping several local and foreign journalists waiting for nearly two hours while they held their monthly meeting, Abu Bakr disappeared into his office.

He left Kalla Akii-bua, the group’s social and welfare officer, Loris Ballack, Imam of the Palo Seco mosque, Imam Hassan Ali of the Arima mosque, Sunni Ahmad of the San Fernando mosque, and Sheikh Tariq, adviser to Akii-bua, to deal with the media.

Akii-bua dismissed allegations of their involvement in the plot to blow of JFK, and the plot itself, as garbage.

Keshwah, another member, distributed copies of an excerpt from the book, The Afgan, by Frederick Forsyth, which painted the Muslimeen as terrorist murderers.

The book said a man who paid a local gang to kill two merchant seamen in a sleazy dockside bar in Port-of-Spain (no date given) was a “senior terrorist in the Jamaat al Muslimeen, the principal Trinidadian group on the side of Al Qaeda.”

It said though still low-profile across the Western media, the Muslimeen “has been steadily growing for years.”

©2005-2006 Trinidad Publishing Company Limited

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