Five and a half hours was not enough time for the ju­ry to de­cide on a ver­dict in the sedi­tion tri­al of Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr yes­ter­day. Af­ter tak­ing al­most dou­ble the al­lot­ted time as­signed for their de­lib­er­a­tions, Jus­tice Mark Mo­hammed ex­er­cised his ju­di­cial dis­cre­tion to dis­charge them and or­der a re­tri­al for Bakr. Mo­hammed said con­sid­er­ing the length of their de­lib­er­a­tions, he could not fore­see that they would be able come to a de­ci­sion in a rea­son­able time. He said al­low­ing the ju­ry ad­di­tion­al time might pres­sure them in­to de­cid­ing on a ver­dict, which would be un­just. Around 9.50 am yes­ter­day, the all-fe­male nine-mem­ber ju­ry en­tered the ju­ry room of the Port-of-Spain Third Crim­i­nal Court to be­gin their de­lib­er­a­tions. When the end of their three-hour time lim­it came to an end, Mo­hammed asked the ju­ry's fore­man if they had come to a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion on the four charges against Bakr. The fore­man replied no and said more time was need­ed to ar­rive at ver­dicts for the charges.

Mo­hammed al­lowed the ex­ten­sion af­ter he clar­i­fied a le­gal is­sue, in re­sponse to a re­quest made by the ju­ry. Around 4 pm, Mo­hammed re­called the ju­ry and re­peat­ed his ear­li­er ques­tion. The fore­man again said a unan­i­mous ver­dict had not be reached. At this stage, Mo­hammed asked the fore­man to in­di­cate the ra­tio they were di­vid­ed on for each charge. With­out re­veal­ing the ex­act de­tails of their de­ci­sion, the fore­man ex­plained that the ju­rors were di­vid­ed five to four on the first charge of com­mu­ni­cat­ing a state­ment with a sedi­tious in­tent and six to three on the charge of in­cit­ing oth­ers to de­mand mon­ey by men­ace. The fore­man said at that mo­ment she and her fel­low ju­rors were un­de­cid­ed on the oth­er two charges of in­cit­ing oth­ers to de­mand mon­ey by men­ace and en­deav­our­ing to pro­voke a breach of the peace. Be­fore dis­charg­ing them, Mo­hammed ex­plained that he could not ac­cept a ma­jor­i­ty ver­dict for the first two charges since legal­ly sev­en ju­rors must agree to a par­tic­u­lar ver­dict for a ma­jor­i­ty to be de­clared. Bakr's tri­al first be­gan in Jan­u­ary this year when more than 1,000 po­ten­tial ju­rors were sum­moned by the ju­di­cia­ry to be cho­sen to sit on the case. Af­ter a ju­ror ex­emp­tion process which last­ed sev­er­al weeks, a nine-mem­ber ju­ry with six al­ter­nates was cho­sen.

Last week, as the tri­al reached its cli­max, Mo­hammed ex­er­cised his dis­cre­tion and or­dered that the ju­ry pan­el be se­questered. Be­fore dis­charg­ing the ju­rors and al­low­ing them to re­turn home to their fam­i­lies, Mo­hammed thanked them for their ser­vice, say­ing they had done a good job dur­ing an "in­tense" tri­al. All four charges stem from Bakr's con­tro­ver­sial Eid-ul-Fitr ser­mon which was de­liv­ered at the Ja­maat's Mu­cu­rapo Road mosque on No­vem­ber 4, 2005. Bakr's hour-long ser­mon cen­tred around the Is­lam­ic prin­ci­ple of za­kaat, which re­quires Mus­lims to do­nate a two and a half per cent of their wealth to char­i­ty. When con­front­ed by me­dia per­son­nel out­side of the Hall of Jus­tice, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day evening, Bakr who was sur­round­ed by scores of his fol­low­ers de­clined to com­ment on the case. Bakr, al­so known as Lennox Phillip, was rep­re­sent­ed by a le­gal team which in­clud­ed Wayne Sturge, Naveen Maraj and Ha­sine Sheikh. Spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal and state pros­e­cu­tor Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan rep­re­sent­ed the State in the tri­al.