Leader of the 1990 up­ris­ing, Yasin Abu Bakr, will be giv­en 14 days to re­spond to a sum­mons to tes­ti­fy be­fore the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the event or face a $2,000 fine. Com­mis­sion lead coun­sel Avory Sinanan, at the start of yes­ter­day's hear­ing, in­formed the com­mis­sion­ers that three let­ters to Bakr re­quest­ing him to tes­ti­fy at the en­quiry still did not re­sult in an ap­pear­ance. The let­ters were writ­ten on De­cem­ber 13, 2010, Jan­u­ary 31, 2011 and on June 16, 2011. A state­ment from at­tor­ney Navin Ma­haraj on June 29, 2011 ex­plained that Bakr could not at­tend the en­quiry at that time be­cause of oth­er court mat­ters.

Ma­haraj as­sured that Bakr would at­tend at a lat­er date, Sinanan said. "It is coun­sel's view that an ap­pro­pri­ate let­ter (should) be again sent to Bakr ad­vis­ing him to come for­ward at this stage," Sinanan said. Com­mis­sion chair­man Sir David Sim­mons not­ed that Bakr's at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge has not re­spond­ed to the com­mis­sion's re­quest for a wit­ness state­ment. "To date, he has not pro­vid­ed the state­ment. We ac­cept that Bakr is a crit­i­cal wit­ness to get a bal­anced view of all that tran­spired in Ju­ly 1990. "Every Mus­limeen wit­ness has said in ev­i­dence that he is de­fer­ring cer­tain an­swers and ques­tions to the Imam." Sim­mons re­called that Loris Bal­lack, at a re­cent hear­ing, ex­plic­it­ly stat­ed that Bakr was the best per­son to give ev­i­dence about a host of mat­ters. Sim­mons said he ac­cepts Bakr's sin­cer­i­ty but the time has reached to send him a fi­nal let­ter in­di­cat­ing what pow­ers re­side in the com­mis­sion.

Sim­mons said the com­mis­sion ex­pects to have one more sit­ting by June 8 and hopes to wrap up the en­quiry by ear­ly Au­gust. He said they did not is­sue sum­mons­es for wit­ness­es, like for­mer UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day, to ap­pear be­cause they want­ed to give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hear the ev­i­dence of oth­ers and re­spond to pos­si­ble al­le­ga­tions they may make. The time has come, how­ev­er, when sum­mons­es have to be is­sued to wit­ness­es, Sim­mons said. "I hope that Bakr will ap­pre­ci­ate that his vol­un­tary at­ten­dance will be high­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed." Giv­ing Sinanan the all-clear, Sim­mons added, "Give him 14 days to re­spond." Sinanan said coun­sel would like to show Bakr that the com­mis­sion, act­ing un­der the pow­ers of the High Court, can sum­mon wit­ness­es. He said if Bakr can­not give a prop­er ex­pla­na­tion but­tressed by ev­i­dence, he will be li­able to a $2,000 fine on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion. He said it is the fairest and most rea­son­able course the com­mis­sion can adopt and that he would con­sult with Bakr's at­tor­ney.