Derek Achong

The sedi­tion tri­al of Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr was yes­ter­day ac­cord­ed a lengthy ad­journ­ment af­ter his lawyers again ex­pressed con­cern over his health. Since the start of the mat­ter this last Jan­u­ary, Bakr, 68, has not at­tend­ed any hear­ing due to an in­jury to his an­kle. The mat­ter is list­ed to be heard be­fore Jus­tice Mark Mo­hammed in the Port-of-Spain Third Court. At yes­ter­day's hear­ing, Bakr's doc­tor at the St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal, Dr Andy Bhag­wan­dass ex­plained that Bakr, a di­a­bet­ic, is still suf­fer­ing with an in­fect­ed wound to the an­kle af­ter un­der­go­ing surgery.

Bakr's lawyer Wayne Sturge ex­plained that Bhag­wan­dass ad­vised that Bakr should stay away from the pro­ceed­ings for a three-month pe­ri­od dur­ing his re­cu­per­a­tion. Oth­er than the sedi­tion mat­ter, Bakr, al­so known as Lennox Phillip, is be­fore Mo­hammed on four oth­er charges in­clud­ing pro­mot­ing a ter­ror­ist act, in­cit­ing oth­ers to breach the peace and in­cit­ing a ri­ot. The charges stem from an Eid ser­mon he de­liv­ered in No­vem­ber 2005 at the Ja­maat's mosque, Mu­cu­rapo Road, St James. Sturge's ap­pli­ca­tion for the ad­journ­ment was grant­ed by Mo­hammed af­ter State pros­e­cu­tor Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan made no ob­jec­tion. Mo­hammed then ad­dressed the hun­dreds of po­ten­tial ju­rors present say­ing that such an ad­journ­ment was the best course of ac­tion.

The ju­rors were then ex­cused from be­ing se­lect­ed from the hear­ing with Mo­hammed not­ing that a new ju­ry pool will be sum­moned by the Ju­di­cia­ry when Bakr has re­cov­ered. At the be­gin­ning of the pro­ceed­ings ear­li­er this year, more than 1,200 peo­ple were sum­moned from whom a nine mem­ber ju­ry would be se­lect­ed, with five al­ter­nates who would be re­quired to fol­low the tri­al. Hun­dreds of the orig­i­nal batch of ju­rors were lat­er ex­cused from the mat­ter for a list of rea­sons in­clud­ing per­son­al knowl­edge of Bakr and his fam­i­ly and med­ical rea­sons. Mo­hammed said yes­ter­day a new ju­ry pool will be of a sim­i­lar size as the first. The mat­ter was ad­journed to May 14 with two sta­tus hear­ings to be held on March 26 and April 16.