Fran­cis Joseph

Coro­ner Nali­ni Singh was ready with her judg­ment on Feb­ru­ary 23, but she had to de­cide whether Ja­maat Al Mus­limeen leader, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, had any­thing to do with the killing of Mar­aval res­i­dent, Is­rael Sam­my. Brent "Big Brent" Miller, who evad­ed the po­lice for a year, turned up at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court. Singh had to put a halt to the de­liv­ery of the judg­ment as Miller was con­sid­ered a main wit­ness to the pro­ceed­ings. She grant­ed him time to get a lawyer be­cause in his state­ment to the po­lice, he im­pli­cat­ed him­self with the killing. On Tues­day, Miller turned up with at­tor­ney Lar­ry Williams. Bakr, who was ab­sent on the last oc­ca­sion, was present on Tues­day with his at­tor­neys Pamela El­der SC and Richard Ma­son. Williams in­di­cat­ed he was in­volved in a mur­der tri­al in the High Court which was not ex­pect­ed to end be­fore the end of next month.

He said, he al­so need­ed time to look at the wit­ness­es state­ments, mean­ing that all the wit­ness­es who gave ev­i­dence at the in­quest, might need to re­turn to start the process all over again. All the wit­ness­es in the case were present and Singh point­ed out they may be need­ed to at­tend court again as Miller must be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cross ex­am­ine them. Williams said maybe af­ter pe­rus­ing the state­ments he may not need all the wit­ness­es. The in­quest was put to May 12 when Singh hopes to be­gin the process again. Miller, of St Ann's Road, St Ann's, gave the state­ment to the po­lice in 2003 when he was ar­rest­ed and charged with the mur­der of casi­no su­per­vi­sor, Jil­la Bowen, at Movi­eTowne, on June 4, 2003.

The mur­der charge lat­er was with­drawn in re­turn for his tes­ti­mo­ny against Bakr and an­oth­er man on a charge of con­spir­a­cy to mur­der two for­mer mem­bers of the Mus­limeen. He was nev­er charged with Bowen's death. That charge fell apart af­ter Miller and an­oth­er wit­ness, Brent "Small Brent" Danglade, re­cant­ed their tes­ti­monies be­fore Jus­tice Mustapha Ibrahim. Last year, the in­quest, touch­ing the death of Mar­aval vil­lager, Is­rael Sam­my, start­ed be­fore Coro­ner Singh at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court. Ear­ly in the pro­ceed­ings, Singh not­ed, that based on state­ments from wit­ness­es, Bakr had been im­pli­cat­ed. Bakr lat­er be­came the sub­ject of the in­quest, and he re­tained El­der as his at­tor­ney.