Hostages Freed, Rebels Give Up in Trinidad

The five-day hostage crisis that devastated the capital city of Trinidad and Tobago ended Wednesday with the surrender of 130 Black Muslim rebels who were holding 46 captives in two besieged downtown buildings.

The surrender was unconditional, said a government spokesman, who suggested that the hostage takers could be charged with treason and murder in crimes that included the bomb-blast deaths of at least two police officers.

But some rebels of the group known as Jaamat Al Muslimeen insisted that the government had promised them amnesty and that they were to be allowed to go home to their controversial religious commune just north of Port-of-Spain.

The rebels, a number of whom appeared to be of East Indian descent, looked more like prisoners than pardoned men as they filed out at gunpoint, one at a time through a drenching tropical rain, to tightly guarded buses outside the Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT) building, where 29 of the hostages were held.

The leader of the attempted coup that led to the hostage taking, Yasin Abu Bakr, was spreadeagled against the wall of a building near the (TTT) headquarters and searched before being prodded toward a bus.

Abu Bakr, clad all in white and with hands clasped atop his head in surrender, smiled broadly and called “Allah is the greatest” to journalists. Earlier, he had walked out of the television building, placed his rifle in the street and then stood at attention as his followers came out singly at two-minute intervals, holding weapons over their heads. He submitted to a search only after all his followers had been searched first, face down on the concrete or up against a wall, and then loaded aboard the buses.

Three hours later, as darkness settled over the no-man’s land around Red House, the Parliament building where 17 top government officials were being held, the hostages there filed out singly, applauding with relief.

Several, including Minister of National Security Selwyn Richardson, limped out of the Parliament building to a waiting panel truck. Richardson and ailing Prime Minister Arthur N.R. Robinson, who was released Tuesday on humanitarian grounds, had both suffered gunshot wounds to the leg during the violent takeover last Friday.

Another government official, Parliamentary Secretary Leon Divine, who was shot during the takeover, died in a Port-of-Spain hospital Wednesday of complications from his wound, government spokesman said.

Although most hostages and all but three hostage takers appeared unhurt, there was no official word on their medical condition. The hostages were taken to the Trinidadian army’s Camp Ogden for physical and psychological examinations.

The government also remained tight-lipped concerning the whereabouts of the approximately 130 rebels who were seen putting down their old-fashioned carbines and shotguns and giving up to soldiers at the two locations.

A few hostage takers spoke to reporters from the windows of the buses that took them away, with one crying out, “We succeeded in our goal of exposing the corruption of this island.” Several insisted that the government had promised to abide by an agreement to grant them full pardons, let them return to their homes at a Black Moslem enclave north of the capital and call elections in the near future to form a new government.

But government spokesman Gregory Shaw said, “As far as the government is concerned, (the surrender) is unconditional. The hostage situation is over.”

Asked what would now happen to the rebels, he said, “I know nothing about what their prospects or their future will be like.” But he added that “they could be charged with treason and murder.”

Shaw insisted that the government had “made no agreement” with the rebels. During the past three days, there have been authoritative reports that an agreement detailing a staged release, as was finally achieved, had been at the heart of hostage negotiations and tentatively accepted by both sides.

A number of Trinidadians interviewed during the hostage release expressed shock when they heard rebel claims that they had been promised amnesty.

“Any agreement made under that kind of duress will not stand up legally and must not be honored,” Bonny Patrick, a Port-of-Spain businessman, said.

The hostage crisis began at 6:10 p.m. last Friday when the rebels drove an explosives-laden car into the enclosure of the country’s central police station. The station was demolished and two policemen died when the car bomb exploded.

Almost simultaneously, two groups of rebels assaulted the Parliament and television buildings, trapping the government officials, including the prime minister, television employees of TTT and others. A handful of the captives in Red House were allowed to go free during the early hours of the siege.

Negotiations with the hostage takers began early Saturday and were carried out mostly through the mediation of an Anglican clergyman, Rev. Knolly Clarke. By late Monday the government believed it had reached an agreement with Abu Bakr, but after calling a news conference to announce the imminent end of the crisis, disappointed governemnt officials said the pact had fallen through because of unacceptable demands by the rebels.

In a series of telephone calls to foreign journalists Tuesday, Abu Bakr complained that the agreement already had been signed both by him and by the government but was torpedoed by a small group of officials who found it unacceptable.

Asked what development had led to the breakthrough Wednesday that ended the crisis, government spokesman Shaw replied: “I have no idea.”

The schock of the hostage taking touched off four days of the worst looting in th island’s history and left major areas of downtown Port of Spain looking like Beirut.