Derek Achong

De­fence at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge yes­ter­day ques­tioned why oth­er pub­lic fig­ures and re­li­gious lead­ers have not been charged with sedi­tion in the past. Sturge, who is rep­re­sent­ing Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr, raised the mat­ter dur­ing cross-ex­am­i­na­tion of act­ing Cpl Cur­tis Fritz, the first state wit­ness to be called.

Fritz, for­mer­ly as­signed to the West­ern Di­vi­sion, was the of­fi­cer who ar­rest­ed Bakr at his Diego Mar­tin home on No­vem­ber 8, 2005 in re­la­tion to an Eid ul Fitr ser­mon he had de­liv­ered three days ear­li­er. Sturge re­ferred to sev­er­al pub­lic fig­ures who had made state­ments in the past on a num­ber of con­tro­ver­sial top­ics, in­clud­ing ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty and race re­la­tions.

Sturge said: "Did you ever get or­ders to ar­rest them for their state­ments? Do you think it is fair that Bakr is the on­ly one to be held for sedi­tion?" Fritz replied "No" to both ques­tions. Dur­ing yes­ter­day's hear­ing ju­rors were shown a video record­ing of Bakr's hour-long speech.

Bakr's ser­mon, which was de­liv­ered at the Ja­maat's Mu­cu­rapo Road, St James mosque to about 300 peo­ple in at­ten­dance, fo­cused on the prin­ci­ple of za­kat, de­scribed as the third pil­lar of Is­lam. Za­kat, Bakr ex­plained was the prac­tice of Mus­lims giv­ing two and a half per cent of their wealth to char­i­ty.

"We will take the za­kat to make young peo­ple set up busi­ness­es to erad­i­cate pover­ty," Bakr said in the ser­mon. Through­out the heat­ed speech Bakr re­peat­ed­ly called up­on Mus­lims to make their za­kat con­tri­bu­tions while al­leg­ing that some wealthy Mus­lims were shirk­ing their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. "Mus­lim broth­ers are starv­ing and they are not do­ing any­thing," Bakr said.

Bakr said then, his or­gan­i­sa­tion would be es­tab­lish­ing a sys­tem of col­lect­ing the con­tri­bu­tions and dis­trib­ut­ing to the im­pov­er­ished. "Young Mus­lims are poor and des­ti­tute. We must give them as­sis­tance," Bakr said. Bakr al­so re­ferred to for­mer In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion pres­i­dent Bro No­ble Khan, who he claimed, had not made za­kat con­tri­bu­tions.

Khan is ex­pect­ed to tes­ti­fy as a state wit­ness in the tri­al against Bakr. Bakr, al­so known as Lennox Phillip, is be­fore the nine-mem­ber ju­ry on four crim­i­nal charges: com­mu­ni­cat­ing a state­ment with sedi­tious in­tent; pro­vok­ing a breach of the peace; and two charges of in­cit­ing oth­ers to de­mand mon­ey by men­ace.

Be­fore ad­journ­ing the mat­ter to to­day, Jus­tice Mo­hammed again warned ju­rors not to dis­cuss the case with friends and rel­a­tives. Tele­vi­sion sta­tion CNC 3's chief cam­era­man Anand "Mano" Rag­bir will be cross-ex­am­ined to­day on what he saw at the Ja­maat's head­quar­ters on the day of the de­liv­ery of the ser­mon. Bakr's le­gal team in­cludes at­tor­neys Naveen Maraj and Vive­ka Par­gass. Spe­cial state pros­e­cu­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, and at­tor­ney Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan are pros­e­cut­ing.