Background on Jamaat Al-Muslimeen (UPDATED)

Quick writeup from the Newhouse News service:

Jamaat al Muslimeen, or "Society of Muslims,'' was founded in the mid-1980s and has several hundred members, according to the Miami Herald. It is composed almost entirely of black converts to Sunni Islam, who make up a small fraction of Trinidad's overall Muslim minority, which is dominated by East Indian Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.

Since the 1990 coup attempt, Jamaat al Muslimeen — whose leaders were eventually granted amnesty from prosecution — has been implicated in drug and weapons trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, money laundering and a series of 2005 bombings in Port of Spain, according to an analysis by the Jamestown Foundation think tank.

In 2001, a Jamaat member was convicted in Miami of trying to ship 70 assault rifles from Fort Lauderdale to Trinidad, the Herald reported. ...

Most recently, Jamaat al Muslimeen's founder and leader, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, was put on trial for the attempted murder of two former Jamaat members, a famously botched plot that resulted in the killing of a woman with no ties to the organization.

Bakr was also charged with sedition for a 2005 sermon, but apparently is still preaching and operating with impunity despite those and several earlier charges he's avoided.

MORE: Tim Blair has a good roundup as well, including reactions from Trinidad and Guyana.

From the latter:

While the Muslimeen are a Sunni group, both Kadir and Ibrahim are Shi'a Muslims.

Hmmmm....Here's a couple of points about former Parliament member Abdul Kadir:

Abdul Kadir hailed originally from Buxton, East Coast Demerara, and attended St Stanislaus College. While working the night shift at the Guyana Water Authority, he enrolled at the University of Guyana from where he graduated in 1975 with a Higher Technical Diploma in Civil Engineering. He then went on to the University of the West Indies (UWI) where he earned a BSc in Civil Engineering, graduating in 1981. He also studied Islamic theology in Iran.

Well, that helps explain this:

Speaking with the Stabroek News yesterday, Kadir's daughter Sauda said that her father had been on his way to Iran where he had been invited to attend an Islamic conference when he was arrested. She said that Kadir had left Guyana on Thursday evening for Trinidad from where he was scheduled to travel to Venezuela to pick up his Iranian visa before proceeding to Iran.

It was when he was about to board his flight to Venezuela that he was taken off the plane and told he was being held "for some conspiracy."

I had heard he had applied for a visa to Iran through Venezuela, but apparently it had been approved and that was just a way station for his trip onwards.

Wow, Chavez really is the new Castro, isn't he? Bakr's radical, terror-linked record is public knowledge, but Chavez invites him into Venezuela and plays matchmaker with Iran. How much did Hugo know about Abdul Kadir's intentions, and when did he know it?