Derek Achong

Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr will know his fate at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1 pm to­day when his three-month sedi­tion tri­al ends. Jus­tice Mark Mo­hammed, who is pre­sid­ing over the mat­ter in the Port-of-Spain Third As­sizes, is ex­pect­ed to end his sum­ma­tion of the case to the nine-mem­ber ju­ry around 10 am. The ju­rors then will be al­lowed a max­i­mum of three hours to de­lib­er­ate on the case af­ter which they will re­turn with ver­dicts on the four charges against Bakr.

If the ju­ry is un­able to come to an unan­i­mous de­ci­sion af­ter the al­lot­ted time, Mo­hammed may use his ju­di­cial dis­cre­tion to ac­cept a ma­jor­i­ty ver­dict or al­low the ju­rors more time. Print­ed copies of key as­pects of the judge's sum­ma­tion will be dis­trib­uted to the ju­rors for their con­sid­er­a­tion dur­ing their de­lib­er­a­tions, a prac­tice which has on­ly been em­braced re­cent­ly by High Court judges hear­ing crim­i­nal cas­es.

Mo­hammed said the copies would as­sist them since Bakr's case in­clud­ed sev­er­al com­plex is­sues. Dur­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of his three-day sum­ma­tion yes­ter­day Mo­hammed iden­ti­fied is­sues raised by spe­cial State pros­e­cu­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, and Bakr's de­fence at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge dur­ing their clos­ing ad­dress­es. Mo­hammed re­mind­ed the ju­rors of Sturge's claims there was a con­spir­a­cy among se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to bring the charges against Bakr.

He said the de­fence ar­gued the State did not prove Bakr had com­mit­ted the of­fences of which he was ac­cused. Bakr, 70, al­so known as Lennox Phillip, is ac­cused of com­mu­ni­cat­ing a state­ment with a sedi­tious in­tent, en­deav­our­ing to pro­voke a breach of the peace and two charges of in­cit­ing oth­ers to de­mand mon­ey by men­ace.

If con­vict­ed of sedi­tion, Bakr could face a max­i­mum penal­ty of up to five years in prison, while the sec­ond sub­stan­tive charge, en­deav­our­ing to pro­voke a breach of the peace, car­ries a penal­ty of up to two years' im­pris­on­ment. In her clos­ing ad­dress, See­ta­hal dis­missed Sturge's claim that Bakr's con­tro­ver­sial ser­mon had Qur'an­ic sup­port. She said there was no ev­i­dence of that.

The ser­mon was de­liv­ered at the Ja­maat's Mu­cu­rapo Road, St James, head­quar­ters on No­vem­ber 4, 2005. The hour-long ad­dress cen­tred on the Is­lam­ic prin­ci­ple of za­kaat, which re­quires Mus­lims to do­nate two-and-a-half per cent of their in­come to char­i­ty. Mo­hammed ex­plained yes­ter­day it was the pros­e­cu­tion's view that in the ser­mon Bakr spoke to his fol­low­ers about the forcible col­lec­tion of za­kaat.

The de­fence claimed Bakr's ser­mon sought to al­le­vi­ate pover­ty in the lo­cal Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty by in­tro­duc­ing an or­gan­ised sys­tem for col­lect­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing za­kaat, Mo­hammed said. See­ta­hal al­so ar­gued that the State had proved its case against Bakr be­yond a rea­son­able doubt. Dur­ing the tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tion brought sev­er­al wit­ness­es to tes­ti­fy, in­clud­ing two em­ploy­ees of tele­vi­sion sta­tion CNC3, who pro­duced a video re­port of the ser­mon which sparked the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion of Bakr.

For­mer In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) pres­i­dent, Bro No­ble Khan, who was re­ferred to specif­i­cal­ly by Bakr in the ser­mon, was the State's main wit­ness. Bakr's le­gal team al­so in­clud­ed at­tor­neys Naveen Maraj and Ha­sine Shaikh. Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan al­so ap­peared for the State.