Joe Toney tells 1990 coup probe MPs outside Parliament didn't help

Joseph Toney on Thursday told the Commission of Enquiry into the failed 1990 coup he and his colleagues who had been taken hostage in the Red House by Muslimeen insurrectionists led by Bilal Abdullah did not get help from colleagues on the outside.

Toney said he managed to send a message to his wife asking her to get MPs on the outside to help him.

“Those on the outside took a decision not to bother with us. They couldn’t care less. They were eating and drinking at the Hilton. If we were killed, so be it," he said.

“This was the message that was relayed back to me from Abdullah,” Toney said. He added that the delaying tactic was used by government advisers who "were playing for time to wear down the captors.”

Toney, who was a senior cabinet minister in the government at the time, also blamed for UNC MP John Humphrey for causing the hostages to be kept in the Red House another day by demanding that conditions for their release be stated in writing. “My colleagues were quite upset. They wondered which side he was on.”

Toney said the Government ministers negotiated with the Muslimeen while they were bound and had guns to their heads and shots were firing all around. “At the end of the day what the man with the gun wanted, he got,” he said.

Toney also told the commission that former Abdullah appeared to be in communication with certain people outside, including persons linked to the protective services.

“I got the impression he was speaking to Abu Bakr at Trinidad and Tobago Television and certain people in the country,” Toney said. Bakr, the leader of the uprising, had stormed the state-owned television station with a group of armed men and had taken everyone there hostage.

Toney, who is the current chairman of the Congress of the People (COP), was handed the national security portfolio following the coup. He told the commission in that capacity he received information that certain individuals assisted the Jamaat al Muslimeen during the uprising.

However he said following an investigation by Special Branch officers “I was told verbally the investigations did not bear fruit."

Read related column: National Security Issues and the CoE into the 1990 coup