Derek Achong

Cam­era­man Anand "Mano" Rag­bir, the state's main wit­ness in the sedi­tion tri­al against Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr, yes­ter­day came un­der in­tense cross-ex­am­i­na­tion on the third day of the tri­al. Rag­bir's cross-ex­am­i­na­tion cen­tred on a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Bakr and one of his fol­low­ers which al­leged­ly took place in Rag­bir's pres­ence on No­vem­ber 5, 2006 at the Ja­maat's Mu­cu­rapo Road head­quar­ters dur­ing Eid-ul-Fitr cel­e­bra­tions. Rag­bir is em­ployed as the chief cam­era­man with tele­vi­sion sta­tion CNC 3. De­spite re­peat­ed ques­tion­ing from Bakr's de­fence at­tor­ney, Wayne Sturge, Rag­bir re­peat­ed­ly said he did not pay at­ten­tion to the con­ver­sa­tion which was oc­cur­ring about two to three me­tres away from him.

Sturge al­leged dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, Bakr told his fol­low­er his mind was oc­cu­pied by three trou­bled teenagers who were at­tempt­ing to stay at the Ja­maat's mosque be­cause of sex­u­al abuse they suf­fered while liv­ing at an or­phan­age. Sturge said dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion Bakr told the fol­low­er that the teenagers' plight had af­fect­ed him dur­ing his ear­li­er ser­mon, say­ing: "I'm hu­man. It must be both­er­ing me." In re­sponse to Sturge's ques­tions, Rag­bir said al­though he was set­ting up cam­era equip­ment for an in­ter­view at the time, it was pos­si­ble that Bakr made the state­ment dur­ing his con­ver­sa­tion. Rag­bir, who said he had in­ter­viewed Bakr on many oc­ca­sions, ad­mit­ted on the day of the ser­mon, Bakr did not seem as elo­quent and flu­id in de­liv­er­ing his speech as he nor­mal­ly did.

Af­ter a cou­ple hours of cross-ex­am­i­na­tion yes­ter­day, Rag­bir's cross-ex­am­i­na­tion was cut short be­cause of le­gal ar­gu­ments be­tween Sturge and spe­cial state pros­e­cu­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC. Rag­bir is ex­pect­ed to take the wit­ness stand again to­day. At the be­gin­ning of yes­ter­day's hear­ing, the fore­man of the nine-mem­ber ju­ry re­quest­ed copies of the sedi­tion leg­is­la­tion for her­self and fel­low ju­rors so they could bet­ter un­der­stand the charges Bakr was fac­ing. Jus­tice Mark Mo­hammed de­nied the re­quest, say­ing it was against prop­er pro­ce­dure. Bakr, al­so known as Lennox Phillip, is fac­ing crim­i­nal charges over his con­tro­ver­sial ser­mon: com­mu­ni­cat­ing a state­ment with sedi­tious in­tent; pro­vok­ing a breach of the peace and two charges of in­cit­ing oth­ers to de­mand mon­ey by men­ace. Bakr's le­gal team in­cludes at­tor­neys Naveen Maraj and Vive­ka Par­gass. At­tor­neys Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan and Shelly-Ann Ga­jad­har are al­so pros­e­cut­ing.