Word: trinidad
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...General Simon Jose Antonio de la Santisima Trinidad Bolivar y Palacios was leaving forever. He had wrested from Spanish domination an empire five times more vast than all of Europe, he had led 20 years of wars to keep it free and united, and he had governed it with a firm hand until the week before, but when it was time to leave he did not even take away with him the consolation that anyone believed in his departure. The only man with enough lucidity to know he really was going, and where he was going to, was the English...
First a Libyan-assisted coup attempt in Trinidad fizzled. Then he was eclipsed as the West's favorite bogeyman by Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who caught the world's attention by invading Kuwait. Some U.S. Congressmen even compared the Iraqi leader to Hitler. Muammar...
...English-speaking Caribbean, where coups are virtually unknown -- only in Grenada has an elected leadership been successfully overthrown, by Maurice Bishop in 1979. "As far as the government is concerned, it's unconditional surrender," said spokesman Gregory Shaw. But the incident was a chilling illustration of how easily Trinidad's economic straits could be exploited by desperate men like Bakr...
...seeds of the crisis were planted eight years ago after a former policeman named Lennox Phillip went to Canada to study engineering and returned to Trinidad as Yasin Abu Bakr, an ardent Islamic radical. Bakr soon became the leader of the Jamaat al-Muslimeen, or Group of Muslims. The Islamic splinter group, with few ties to the mainstream Muslims who make up 6% of the Trinidad and Tobago population of 1.3 million, espoused a potent mixture of religious fundamentalism and left-wing politics. The self-styled "Imam" traveled to Libya and was a vocal supporter of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi...
Bakr's anger turned to action on the evening of July 27, when he and more than 70 of his men stormed the Trinidad and Tobago TV studios, a mile from their mosque. At the same time, a powerful car bomb gutted the downtown police headquarters, and another group of gunmen seized the parliament building, taking Robinson and seven Cabinet ministers hostage. At 6:18 p.m., Bakr appeared on state-owned TV and announced that his "troops" had overthrown the government. Later he demanded that Robinson resign, new elections be held and an amnesty be granted to his rebel band...