PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — Police have released the leader of the Jamaat Al Muslimeen group, Yasin Abu Bakr.

He was detained for three days for questioning in the murder of the prominent former state prosecutor Dana Seeathal, who was gunned down in 2014 as she left a casino.

Bakr, who led an unsuccessful coup against the former ANR Robinson Government in 1990, was among 11 people, including a woman, detained by the police following a pre-dawn raid on Monday.

As he emerged from the Central police Station in the capital, Bakr, 74, thanked Allah for his release,

“I wish to thank Allah for my release. He is the one who is the final determiner in all affairs. I also wish to thank my immediate family, my wives and children, and more than anything else, all the people who braved the weather night and day, all the Muslims who braved the weather night and day for my release,” he said.

He added: “I wish to thank… the commissioner of police and all the officers who I dealt with during my incarceration for their professionalism and the way they dealt with me. I wish to thank them for that and also to clarify that the lead investigator was Mr Rampersad and not Mr Jacob. He was not the lead investigator so he did not abdicate his duty,” Bakr told reporters.

Members of the Jamat Al Muslimeen group had staged an all night vigil outside the Central Police Station and Bakr’s son, Fuad, had described his father’s detention as “unfair”.

Fuad Bakr also downplayed a statement made by a high ranking member of the Muslimeen group that if after 72 hours, and the leader is not released “we will have to go and get him”.

“I know we like bacchanal in Trinidad and Tobago… but let us not put the population of Trinidad and Tobago into any mode of panic,” he said.

Despite more than a million dollar no one has been officially charged with Seeathal death.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar said she would not discuss the detention of Bakr, saying the police must be left to do their work.

“Those matters are in the hands of law enforcement and the police, so I have no comment on that, except to let the police do their work,” she said, insisting that her administration played no role in his detention.

“We have no interference in any way with that matter.”

Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley, speaking at a political meeting here on Tuesday night, said he hoped the detention of Bakr was as a result of “serious, honest police work”.

He warned that if this was not the case then the country would have entered “another very dangerous and unacceptable state of affairs.

“I take no issue with the police doing their job, but I am still a citizen observing.

“I hope that the police could add to the detection level that is so low with respect to criminal conduct in Trinidad and Tobago, so I hope at the end of the enquiry and the questioning of Bakr that it is in fact serious, honest police work,” Rowley said.