Ja­maat al Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr will not tes­ti­fy in his de­fence when his sedi­tion tri­al re­sumes lat­er to­day. Af­ter le­gal ar­gu­ments ear­li­er this week, the State closed its case against Bakr, with the tes­ti­mo­ny of for­mer In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor and In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) pres­i­dent Bro No­ble Khan. When the case was called yes­ter­day, Bakr, through his at­tor­neys, opt­ed to not tes­ti­fy or call wit­ness­es to tes­ti­fy in his de­fence. In­stead, his at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge will to­day be­gin his ad­dress to the nine-mem­ber all-fe­male ju­ry, who is sit­ting in the tri­al. Spe­cial state pros­e­cu­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, is ex­pect­ed to fol­low Sturge, af­ter which Jus­tice Mark Mo­hammed will be­gin his sum­ma­tion to the ju­ry be­fore they are al­lowed to de­lib­er­ate on the case.

Since the tri­al com­menced in mid-Ju­ly, sev­er­al state wit­ness­es have tes­ti­fied, in­clud­ing Khan who was cross-ex­am­ined by Sturge for al­most six days. The State has pre­sent­ed "bad-char­ac­ter ev­i­dence" against Bakr in the form of a short nar­ra­tive which il­lus­trat­ed his in­volve­ment in the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, which oc­curred ex­act­ly 22 years ago, on to­day's date. The oth­er wit­ness in the tri­al were tele­vi­sion sta­tion CNC3's deputy head of news Samp­son Nan­ton and head cam­era­man Anand "Mano" Rag­bir. Nan­ton and Rag­bir pro­duced the re­port on Bakr's 2005 Eid ul-Fitr ser­mon which sparked the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Bakr's al­leged­ly sedi­tious state­ments.

Some of the ev­i­dence in the tri­al was ad­mit­ted in­to ev­i­dence by way of for­mal ad­mis­sions which were agreed to by state pros­e­cu­tors and Bakr's de­fence team. Be­sides sedi­tion, Bakr, 70, al­so known as Lennox Phillip, faces charges of in­cit­ing oth­ers to breach the peace and in­cit­ing oth­ers to de­mand mon­ey by men­ace from the lo­cal Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and from Khan.

Khan was specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned in Bakr's speech which was de­liv­ered at the Ja­maat's Mu­cu­rapo Road, St James, mosque. The hour-long speech cen­tred around the Is­lam­ic prin­ci­ple of za­kaat which re­quires Mul­sims to do­nate a por­tion of the wealth to char­i­ty which aids poor Mus­lims. Bakr's tri­al had been ad­journed sev­er­al times this year be­cause in­jury to Bakr's foot. Bakr, a di­a­bet­ic, is still re­cov­er­ing from surgery to his an­kle and has been al­lowed to sit in the pris­on­ers' dock of the Port-of-Spain Third As­sizes with his foot el­e­vat­ed on a cush­ion. Bakr's le­gal team al­so in­cludes at­tor­neys Naveen Maraj and Ha­sine Shaikh.