LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20010618/t000050623.html
Monday, June 18, 2001
U.S. Links Gun Deal to Group That Attempted Trinidad Coup
Caribbean: Target of Fla. sting allegedly told federal agent he was sent
by Jamaat al Muslimeen, which staged 1990 siege.
By MARK FINEMAN, Times Staff Writer
MIAMI--To all but a small circle of federal agents, the sting
operation seemed routine at first.
After more than a year of negotiations, undercover agent Steve
McKean, working for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, led
his target to a nondescript warehouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where
McKean produced the wares:
Sixty AK-47 assault rifles and 10 submachine guns equipped with
silencers--enough weaponry to stage a small coup in a small enough land.
But more chilling than the arrest of McKean's Trinidad-born customer,
Keith Andre Glaude, two weeks ago on federal gun charges was Glaude's
declaration of whom he was working for. According to McKean's sworn
affidavit, Glaude told federal investigators that he was sent by Jamaat al
Muslimeen, a Black Muslim group that ranks among the most militant Islamic
forces in the Americas.
Glaude, who pleaded not guilty in federal court last week, reportedly
identified his contact in Trinidad and Tobago as Lance "Fire" Small of
Jamaat al Muslimeen. In his affidavit, McKean also said he and an
informant had been negotiating directly with Small all along.
Jamaat has a track record. In July 1990, the group seized Trinidad
and Tobago's Parliament at gunpoint, took the prime minister, legislators
and journalists hostage and blew up police headquarters with a car bomb
during a six-day siege. The accompanying revolt and rioting left more than
30 people dead.
An ATF investigation after the siege found that many of the guns
Jamaat used were purchased in Fort Lauderdale's Broward County, according
to the bureau's regional spokesman, Ed Halley.
During the same months that McKean was negotiating the arms sale this
year, Trinidad and Tobago's prime minister, Basdeo Panday, was warning his
oil- and gas-rich nation of 1.3 million people that another such plot was
afoot, making clear he was talking about Jamaat without naming the group.
Group Denies Link to Arrested Man
In the days since Glaude's arrest, Jamaat has disowned both him and
the gun sale. The group's security chief, Hasan Anyabwile, told reporters
in Trinidad and Tobago's capital, Port of Spain, "If he is claiming he
went for the guns on our behalf, that was a purely maverick and
unsolicited action on his part."
Jamaat's leader, Yasin abu Bakr, a former police officer who launched
the 1990 coup attempt with more than 100 men, told a local radio station
that there was no connection between his group and Glaude.
Abu Bakr, who has found limited appeal through the years in a
population divided equally between ethnic East Indians and mostly
Christian blacks, was initially jailed with his men and sentenced to death
for the coup attempt. The conviction was overturned on appeal in 1992, and
the entire group has been free since.