The Trini­bad artiste who had threat­ened sup­port­ers of a par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal par­ty in so­cial me­dia videos will know his fate on May 7.  

Bradlee Dha­naram, 35, of San­ta Flo­ra plead­ed guilty be­fore Siparia Mag­is­trate Glo­ria Jas­math on Wednes­day and was grant­ed $10,000 own bail.

The artiste was ar­rest­ed last Fri­day dur­ing a TTPS Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Unit in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors sought ad­vice from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Roger Gas­pard and on Mon­day he was charged un­der Reg­u­la­tion 12(a) of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, as out­lined in Le­gal No­tice No. 240 is­sued un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.  

The charge - mak­ing state­ments to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty - stemmed from the con­tent of the videos, which cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly on so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

In his mit­i­ga­tion plea for le­nien­cy,  Dha­naram’s at­tor­ney Frank Git­tens said his client, who is an en­ter­tain­er and labour­er, did not ful­ly un­der­stand the ef­fects of his words - that they in­cit­ed vi­o­lence.

Sub­mit­ting that his client was re­morse­ful, Git­tens said the elec­tion “brought out a cer­tain pas­sion” in him that he mis­di­rect­ed and did not man­age prop­er­ly.  Giv­en his ex­pe­ri­ence, how­ev­er, he said Dha­naram, a fa­ther of three, has a bet­ter ap­pre­ci­a­tion of peo­ple’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to free­dom of thought and ex­pres­sion and to sup­port any po­lit­i­cal par­ty of their choice.  The of­fence car­ries, on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, a $100,000 penal­ty and five years’ im­pris­on­ment.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to May 7 for sen­tenc­ing.