Jus­tice Mark Mo­hammed has or­dered a re­tri­al in the sedi­tion mat­ter against Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, af­ter all-day de­lib­er­a­tions end­ed with a hung ju­ry this af­ter­noon.

The mat­ter was be­ing heard in the Third Crim­i­nal Court at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port of Spain.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed an­nounced the de­ci­sion af­ter ju­rors had de­lib­er­at­ed for sev­er­al hours on the four charges against Bakr but ul­ti­mate­ly failed to re­turn a ver­dict.

Bakr, 70, al­so known as Lennox Phillip, was 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. The charges arose out of com­ments he made dur­ing an Eid-ul-Fitr ser­mon de­liv­ered at the Ja­maat's Mu­cu­rapo Road, St James mosque on No­vem­ber 4, 2005.

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 on Wednes­day that 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.

Bakr's de­fence at­tor­ney was Wayne Sturge. His le­gal team in­clud­ed at­tor­neys Naveen Maraj and Ha­sine Shaikh.

Spe­cial State pros­e­cu­tor Dana See­ta­hal SC and Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan ap­peared for the State.