An­na-Lisa Paul

The tri­al in­volv­ing TV6's Crime Watch tele­vi­sion host Ian Al­leyne was un­able to be­gin yes­ter­day af­ter pros­e­cu­tor George Bus­by in­di­cat­ed his in­abil­i­ty to pro­ceed as he was yet to com­plete the process of fil­ing and serv­ing doc­u­ments on op­pos­ing coun­sel.Bus­by had been grant­ed two pre­vi­ous ad­journ­ments when the mat­ter was called last Oc­to­ber 9 and De­cem­ber 13, re­spec­tive­ly.

Set for tri­al be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar in the Port-of-Spain Eighth Court yes­ter­day, Bus­by re­quest­ed a short ad­journ­ment as he said that he was "halfway through" fil­ing state­ments.Dur­ing the hear­ing last De­cem­ber, Bus­by said the pros­e­cu­tion had 22 wit­ness­es and would file state­ments. Al­leyne is fac­ing three charges un­der Sec­tion 32 (2) of the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act which makes it an of­fence to re­veal the iden­ti­ty of a rape vic­tim dur­ing a broad­cast.

The charges stem from a video de­pict­ing the rape of a 13-year-old which was al­leged­ly aired three times on tele­vi­sion sta­tion TV6 in Oc­to­ber 2011. Al­leyne al­so faces an ad­di­tion­al charge of re­sist­ing ar­rest­ing of­fi­cer ASP Ajith Per­sad in the ex­e­cu­tion of his du­ties. Al­so charged along­side Al­leyne are ex­ec­u­tives of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Net­work (CCN), the par­ent com­pa­ny of TV6, which airs Al­leyne's night­ly Crime Watch pro­gramme.

CCN faces three sim­i­lar charges as Al­leyne, as well as six charges un­der the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act for al­leged breach­es of their li­cence and con­ces­sion which was is­sued by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT).

CCN con­tin­ues to be rep­re­sent­ed in the mat­ter by at­tor­neys Sophia Chote, SC, Michelle Solomon-Baksh and Trevor Clarke. Al­leyne is rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Om Lal­la and Der­rick Bal­li­ram. At­tor­ney Si­monne Jag­ger­nauth al­so ap­pears along­side Bus­by for the pros­e­cu­tion. Stand­ing be­fore Ay­ers-Cae­sar at 10.09 am yes­ter­day, Bus­by apol­o­gised for not ful­fill­ing a promise to file and serve the pa­pers on time.

In­di­cat­ing he had al­ready com­mu­ni­cat­ed his po­si­tion to the oth­er at­tor­neys, Bus­by promised to be ready by the next hear­ing.With no ob­jec­tions forth­com­ing from Chote and Lal­la, Ay­ers-Cae­sar lat­er grant­ed the ad­journ­ment af­ter hear­ing from Lal­la he was now "tak­ing in­struc­tions" from Al­leyne.Al­though Lal­la did not re­veal what those in­struc­tions were, he promised the court op­pos­ing coun­sel would be in­formed be­fore­hand.

The mat­ter was ad­journed and a new tri­al date of March 6 was agreed on.Po­lice com­plainant, ASP Ajith Per­sad of the Port-of-Spain CID, was in court yes­ter­day.