Po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Fuad Abu Bakr has been freed of four crim­i­nal charges re­lat­ed to his par­tic­i­pa­tion in a Black Lives Mat­ter (BLM) protest at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in June 2020.

On Wednes­day, Mag­is­trate Ke­ri­anne By­er dis­missed the charges against Abu Bakr for want of pros­e­cu­tion due to re­peat­ed de­lays in start­ing his tri­al.

Abu Bakr, son of for­mer Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr and po­lit­i­cal leader of the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion (NNV), was ac­cused of as­sault­ing three po­lice of­fi­cers and ob­struct­ing an­oth­er in the ex­e­cu­tion of his du­ties on June 8, 2020.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that when Mag­is­trate By­er set the tri­al date last Sep­tem­ber, po­lice pros­e­cu­tors in­di­cat­ed that the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) had to lead the case as Abu Bakr is a “po­lit­i­cal fig­ure”.

Dur­ing Wednes­day’s hear­ing at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court, po­lice pros­e­cu­tors asked for an ad­journ­ment as they did not have a copy of the case file. They claimed that they con­tact­ed the DPP’s Of­fice and the file could not be lo­cat­ed there.

Abu Bakr’s lawyer Blaine So­bri­an im­me­di­ate­ly made an ap­pli­ca­tion for the charges to be dis­missed. So­bri­an al­so point­ed to the fact that the po­lice of­fi­cer who charged his client missed sev­en con­sec­u­tive hear­ings of the case, in­clud­ing on Wednes­day. Po­lice pros­e­cu­tors ad­mit­ted that their col­league re­tired in April.

Mag­is­trate By­er even­tu­al­ly up­held the ap­pli­ca­tion. Not­ing that there was no progress in get­ting a State pros­e­cu­tor to lead the case, she said her de­ci­sion might have been dif­fer­ent if a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the DPP’s Of­fice had ap­peared be­fore her to ex­plain the rea­sons for the de­lays. She al­so point­ed out that she had a du­ty to ro­bust­ly man­age the case based on the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules.

Abu Bakr is still fac­ing two charges for us­ing vi­o­lent lan­guage and for breach­ing pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that re­strict­ed pub­lic gath­er­ings. Those charges stem from a sep­a­rate protest in down­town Port-of-Spain that he al­leged­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in on June 30, 2020.

Those charges were set to go on tri­al last week but the case had to be ad­journed as the pros­e­cu­tion was not ready. The tri­al is now set to take place next month. (DA)