Leah So­rias

Po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Ish­mael Samad who is ac­cused of smash­ing a $25,000 gate with a sledge­ham­mer was pushed on the shoul­der as he en­tered court yes­ter­day.

Samad is charged with the un­law­ful and ma­li­cious dam­age to the house where for­mer chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) was stay­ing in Cas­cade. Just as Samad was near­ing the en­trance to the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court on St Vin­cent Street, a man stand­ing on the pave­ment walked up to him and be­gan curs­ing, shout­ing and ges­tic­u­lat­ing in Samad's face. Hys­ter­i­cal, the man, who Samad said he recog­nised, pushed Samad's on the shoul­der and threat­ened him. Po­lice of­fi­cers had to part the two men. Samad said he tried to get po­lice of­fi­cers at the court to get the man's name, but "they ig­nored me." "They just let him go and the man went walk­ing up St Vin­cent Street," he said.

Samad said he made a re­port at the Port-of-Spain CID and in­tend­ed to press charges, once the man was iden­ti­fied. He said he on­ly knew the man's first name."I'm al­ways protest­ing in front the Red House and he is al­ways against me be­cause I am against the PNM," he said. "So he wait­ed for me at the court and when he saw me he went bal­lis­tic." Wav­ing his frac­tured left fin­ger, which he in­jured dur­ing the in­ci­dent, Samad said the man's threats would not de­ter him from fur­ther protests. He ex­pressed re­gret and anger, though, that he dam­aged his own fin­ger. "I am so mad at my­self...I was in so much pain and they took me for an X-ray which said it was frac­tured," he said. Samad was charged with un­law­ful­ly and ma­li­cious­ly dam­ag­ing of a BET elec­tron­ic gate val­ued at $25,000, be­long­ing to James Ross Hart, son of the Calder Hart. He stood be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Lu­ci­na Car­de­nas-Ra­goo­nanan in the Four A Court.

The charge was laid by PC Hay­den Gon­za­les of the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion. Samad was ar­rest­ed out­side Hart's house, at 6 de Li­ma Road, on Wednes­day, af­ter he al­leged­ly at­tempt­ed to break down the elec­tron­ic gate to make a cit­i­zen's ar­rest of the se­nior Hart. He was not called up­on to plead as the charge was laid in­dictably. He plead­ed not guilty af­ter a sum­ma­ry tri­al was rec­om­mend­ed by po­lice pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Azad Ali. His at­tor­ney Clyde Weath­er­head made a re­quest for con­tin­ued bail for the ac­tivist, who was grant­ed bail at the po­lice sta­tion on Wednes­day, in the sum of $30,000.

Weath­er­head point­ed out that al­though the cost of the gate was stat­ed, he want­ed to know the ac­tu­al cost of dam­age done to the gate.

But Ali said he was not in pos­ses­sion of this and re­quest­ed time to get that in­for­ma­tion. Car­de­nas-Ra­goo­nanan ad­journed the mat­ter to June 10.