Jamaat al Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr says he was denied entry to Jamaica on Wednesday because the Jamaicans were angry over T&T’s decision to deny entry to 13 of its citizens recently. Abu Bakr spoke during a news conference at his mosque at Mucurapo Road, Port-of-Spain. He also denied that he was a security threat to Jamaica. “What threat am I to Jamaica? I mean, really?” he asked.
Bakr denied he was on an Interpol watch list, recalling he was freed by the Privy Council of charges laid after the 1990 attempted coup. The Privy Council ruled in 1992 that the amnesty under which the insurrectionists were freed was invalid but it would be improper to rearrest and try them.
Abu Bakr said he thought Jamaicans had taken him for Isis leader Bakr al-Baghdadi but he maintained he was “Abu Bakr al-Trinidadi.” Noting that Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan will be leading a Million Man march in Kingston tomorrow, Abu Bakr said: “I must be more dangerous than Farrakhan.”
Attempting a Jamaican accent, he said he was told by “a high official” that “the Jamaican authorities and Government are pissed off. Boy, last week them (T&T) hold some Jamaicans (and) send them back home and them no give them no phone call, no food to eat, them make them sleep on the floor and more than that, them murder a Jamaican youthman in Trinidad and make him kneel down on the ground and shoot him and Jamaicans are pissed off with that.”
Bakr said he spoke to the unnamed official who ordered that he was to be denied entry to Jamaica. He said the official responded: “Boss, where you now come from?” Bakr said he said Trinidad and the official replied: “Then you understand where it come from. You understand that this direction come from your own country.”
Bakr said he was told about Jamaica’s Foreign Affairs Minister, AJ Nicholson, advising his T&T’s Gary Griffith to shut up and not muddy the waters on the issue of immigration between the two countries and the official told him to try and understand the existing atmosphere.
No Caricom after this’
Bakr also insisted that Caricom must answer questions on the free movement of nationals from the region and said the matter may be taken to the Caribbean Court of Justice. When he was finished, he said, there would not be any Caricom and he was holding the governments of T&T and Jamaica responsible for his detention.
Nevertheless, he was confident the T&T Government would resolve the matter and there should be a diplomatic solution to the immigration dispute between the two Caribbean nations. Griffith said on Thursday there was no truth to claims that the T&T Government had given information to the Jamaicans about Abu Bakr’s visit. He also said Bakr’s being denied entry was not an act of retaliation by the Jamaicans after 13 of its citizens were denied entry here and deported.
Bakr criticised the Prime Minister’s failure to give financial support to his school at Mucurapo Road, saying he would not turn away any of the Jamaicans and children from other regional states who are being educated there.
Private flight home
Bakr said he was denied a telephone call and it was not until High Commissioner to Kingston Dr Iva Gloudon intervened that he was able to leave the island at 3 am on Thursday on a private jet to Piarco. He said the flight was very comfortable and he felt like a prime minister while being flown home. The flight cost an estimated $250,000. Griffith denied the T&T Government paid for it.
Bakr refused to return home in an economy seat on a scheduled flight, he said, because he had a Caribbean Airlines ticket for a first-class seat. He said he was put in a holding bay while awaiting the private jet in Kingston and was accompanied by two members of the Jamaica Defence Force, one police officer and an immigration officer on his return flight.