Derek Achong

Height­ened se­cu­ri­ty is ex­pect­ed at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate's Court and the High Court this morn­ing with the sched­uled ap­pear­ances of three lo­cal per­son­al­i­ties. They are tele­vi­sion host Ian Al­leyne, for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day and Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr.

The T&T Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed that of­fi­cers of the Court and Process Branch, which is charged with main­tain­ing se­cu­ri­ty at the na­tion's courts, are ex­pect­ing a high turnout of spec­ta­tors and sup­port­ers for Al­leyne's sec­ond ap­pear­ance in court with­in the last three weeks.

Dur­ing his last ap­pear­ance on April 24, Al­leyne was greet­ed by scores of his fans who wait­ed out­side the St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain cour­t­house to catch a glimpse of him af­ter he was re­leased on bail. The bois­ter­ous fans, who came armed with horns and oth­er mu­si­cal in­stru­ments for his ap­pear­ance, had to be warned re­peat­ed­ly by po­lice of­fi­cers about the dis­tur­bances caused by the singing and chant­i­ng in front of the court.

Al­leyne is cur­rent­ly be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar fac­ing three charges un­der Sec­tion 32 (2) of the Sex­u­al Of­fence Act which makes it an of­fence to re­veal the iden­ti­ty of a rape vic­tim dur­ing a broad­cast. The charges stem from a video de­pict­ing the rape of a 13-year-old which was al­leged­ly aired three times on tele­vi­sion sta­tion TV6 in Oc­to­ber last year.

Al­leyne al­so faces an ad­di­tion­al charge of re­sist­ing ar­rest­ing of­fi­cer ASP Ajith Per­sad in the ex­e­cu­tion of his du­ties. Al­leyne has de­nied all the charges and was grant­ed $80,000 bail by Mag­is­trate Ay­ers-Cae­sar. Al­so ex­pect­ed to ap­pear along­side Al­leyne are ex­ec­u­tives of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Net­work (CCN), the par­ent com­pa­ny of TV6, which airs Al­leyne's night­ly Crime Watch pro­gramme.

CCN faces three sim­i­lar charges as Al­leyne as well as six charges un­der the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act for al­leged breach­es of their li­cence and con­ces­sion which was is­sued by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT). Mean­while, for­mer prime min­is­ter Pan­day will ap­pear be­fore Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Mur­ray si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Pan­day is be­fore Mur­ray on a re­tri­al for al­leged­ly fail­ing to de­clare a Lon­don bank ac­count con­trary to the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. He is ac­cused of fail­ing to dis­close the ac­count held at Na­tion­al West­min­ster Bank plc, Wim­ble­don, Lon­don, to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for the years 1997 to 1999.

In March 2006, Pan­day was ini­tial­ly found guilty and sen­tenced to serve two years in prison, the max­i­mum penal­ty un­der the leg­is­la­tion, by Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc­Ni­colls. Pan­day ap­pealed the de­ci­sion and the con­vic­tion was quashed by the Court of Ap­peal and a re­tri­al or­dered, which was up­held on ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil.

Dur­ing the mat­ter lat­er to­day, Pan­day's at­tor­neys and State pros­e­cu­tors are ex­pect­ed to make le­gal sub­mis­sions in the mat­ter, fol­low­ing a short tri­al which took place late last year. Pan­day has re­tained David Aaron­berg, QC, as his de­fence at­tor­ney while Queen's Coun­sel Tim­o­thy Cas­sel is pros­e­cut­ing the mat­ter.

Bakr is ex­pect­ed to make is first ap­pear­ance be­fore Jus­tice Mark Mo­hammed and a nine-mem­ber ju­ry in the Port-of-Spain Third Crim­i­nal Court lat­er to­day to be­gin his tri­al for sedi­tion. Since the be­gin­ning of the mat­ter in Jan­u­ary, Bakr, a di­a­bet­ic, has not been able to at­tend court due to a leg in­jury.

Spe­cial arrange­ments have been put in place at the Hall-of-Jus­tice to ac­com­mo­date Bakr, who is said to be still re­cov­er­ing, le­gal sources said. Up to last Fri­day, a sec­ondary met­al de­tec­tor stood in front of the court­room where the mat­ter will be tried. Wit­ness­es and spec­ta­tors of Bakr's tri­al are ex­pect­ed to un­der­go ad­di­tion search­es at the court in­clud­ing hav­ing to lodge all cel­lu­lar phones at a se­cu­ri­ty desk pri­or to en­try to the court.

The T&T Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed that Bakr may be al­lowed to use a makeshift en­trance to the court which was set up along Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain be­cause the wheel­chair ramp at the court is yet to be com­plet­ed. Be­sides sedi­tion, Bakr, 68, al­so faces charges of pro­mot­ing a ter­ror­ist act, in­cit­ing oth­ers to breach the peace and in­cit­ing a ri­ot.