World Notes TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

At 6 p.m. Friday Trinidad's main television station broadcast a startling announcement: "The government has been overthrown." The author of the statement was Abu Bakr, the fortyish leader of a small Muslim group widely ^ regarded in Trinidad as violent outlaws. Bakr's 250 followers had blown up the police station in the capital of Port-of-Spain, seized the TV station and taken the country's Prime Minister and Cabinet hostage in the Parliament building. Declaring that he did not recognize "man's law" but only the "law of Allah," Bakr said he had seized power "to stop the incest, robbery and drugs, which there was no hope for the present regime to stop."

Bakr, a former policeman, founded the militant Jamaat al-Muslimeen, or Group of Muslims, six years ago to preach a violent but moralistic antidrug message. He and his band are said to receive money from Libya. As gunfire and explosions rocked the capital overnight, Trinidad's 5,000-member police force moved into the streets to restore order. Government officials declared that they were in control, but at week's end Bakr continued to hold his captives.