SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Pop­u­lar Cana­di­an YouTu­ber Chris Hugh­es, who has been in po­lice cus­tody since last week, will fi­nal­ly ap­pear in court to­day to face sedi­tion charges. He is ex­pect­ed to be rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Criston J Williams.

Hugh­es, 45, was de­tained by po­lice on May 28. Last Thurs­day, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice charged Hugh­es with sedi­tion, af­ter videos showed him al­leged­ly in­ter­view­ing re­put­ed gang mem­bers in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try. Among the ar­eas he al­leged­ly vis­it­ed were Tu­na­puna, Mor­vant, La Hor­quet­ta, Bel­mont and Sea Lots.

Sgt Lee, of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit, for­mal­ly laid the charge.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Hugh­es be­gan af­ter his so­cial me­dia ac­tiv­i­ties un­der the pseu­do­nym “Chris Must List” came to light, po­lice said.

Hugh­es al­leged­ly post­ed videos fea­tur­ing in­di­vid­u­als pro­fess­ing to be gang mem­bers, ad­vo­cat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and us­ing threat­en­ing lan­guage.

Chris Must List’s attorneys CJ Williams, right, Gabriel Glanville and Anthea Smith at the Fraud Squad on Richmond Street, Port-of-Spain, last Tuesday.

ANISTO ALVES

Fol­low­ing his de­ten­tion, Hugh­es was in­ter­viewed and in­formed of the al­le­ga­tions against him, fol­low­ing which Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard di­rect­ed de­tec­tives to charge him un­der Sec­tion 4(1) (c) of the Sedi­tion Act.

Calls to Williams’ cell phone yes­ter­day went unan­swered.

On Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er, Williams told Guardian Me­dia that Hugh­es was fear­ful for his life. Williams said he too was wor­ried about his safe­ty.

“I wish to guard care­ful­ly against any mis­in­for­ma­tion be­ing placed in the pub­lic do­main about him (Hugh­es) by the TTPS.”

As a hu­man rights de­fend­er, Williams plead­ed with me­dia hous­es to act re­spon­si­bly with their re­port­ing and “to please do not put out any mis­in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing my client and my­self that could re­sult in the loss of our life.”

A note pur­port­ing to come from Hugh­es’ fam­i­ly on Sat­ur­day al­so be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, stat­ing that they were work­ing around the clock with the au­thor­i­ties and glob­al af­fairs in Cana­da and Trinidad.

Trinidad is the third coun­try Hugh­es has found him­self in trou­ble with the law.

In Oc­to­ber 2015 he spent near­ly two weeks in a cell in Cu­ba af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed for fly­ing a cam­era-equipped drone in Ha­vana’s Plaza de la Rev­olu­cion. Law en­force­ment of­fi­cials thought Hugh­es was a spy for the US gov­ern­ment. He was ar­rest­ed and ques­tioned on when he last met then-US pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, ac­cord­ing to an ar­ti­cle post­ed by CTV News.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with CTV Toron­to, Hugh­es said his drone, which he used for two days to cap­ture over­head footage of the Cuban cap­i­tal, was checked by cus­toms of­fi­cials up­on en­ter­ing the coun­try.

Canadian content creator and YouTuber Chris Hughes poses with members of a local gang.

Instagram/Chris Must List

On the third day, he flew the drone above the Rev­o­lu­tion Square, which is a tourist des­ti­na­tion, but was ap­proached by po­lice of­fi­cers.

Hugh­es said he was ques­tioned for 13 hours by Cuban po­lice, dri­ven to col­lect his pos­ses­sions and locked in a cell at a de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ty. His or­deal end­ed a few days lat­er when he was dri­ven to the air­port and put on a flight back to Cana­da.

Hugh­es al­so land­ed him­self in hot wa­ter with the law when he was ar­rest­ed and de­port­ed from So­ma­lia in 2022 for throw­ing mon­ey at the poor.

A five-minute news clip by the African Di­as­po­ra New Chan­nel stat­ed that Hugh­es cre­at­ed his­to­ry by be­ing the first per­son in Africa to ex­ploit the un­der­priv­i­leged.

In one video, Hugh­es was seen throw­ing mon­ey in the face of a lit­tle boy who ap­peared ter­ri­fied. An­oth­er showed him fling­ing mon­ey at peo­ple sit­ting on the side­walk.

In So­ma­lia, it is seen as dis­re­spect­ful to throw mon­ey at less for­tu­nate peo­ple. Per­sons who do­nate to the poor are al­so asked to pre­serve the hu­man dig­ni­ty of those re­ceiv­ing the do­na­tions.

Af­ter he was de­port­ed from So­ma­lia, Hugh­es took to so­cial me­dia to crit­i­cise the me­dia cov­er­age of his vis­it, say­ing he gave away US$2,000 to the peo­ple there.