?The Aus­tralian boat cap­tain charged with pos­ses­sion of two high-tech ri­fles, and who was con­fined to his boat dur­ing the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM), has been al­lowed to move about freely in T&T. How­ev­er, his guilty plea when he first ap­peared in court was changed yes­ter­day to not guilty by Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate Ava­son Quin­lan. Michael Nor­man, cap­tain of the en­vi­ron­men­tal boat Save Our Seas, stood be­fore Quin­lan in the 4b Court yes­ter­day. Be­sides the gun charge, he was charged with hav­ing in his pos­ses­sion 2,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, 240 12-gauge car­tridges, im­port­ing the weapons and am­mu­ni­tion, as well as mak­ing a false de­c­la­ra­tion to he Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

He is on $140,000 bail. On the last oc­ca­sion, Quin­lan re­quest­ed that Cus­toms' at­tor­ney Shirley Shep­pard "sat­is­fy the court" with in­for­ma­tion on whether a de­c­la­ra­tion could be part­ly writ­ten/part­ly oral. This was done in light of Nor­man's claim that the de­c­la­ra­tion form pro­vid­ed to him con­tained on­ly a cat­e­go­ry for hand­guns and shot­guns, and not for ri­fles. He said this was why he did not de­clare the ri­fles in writ­ing, though he told Cus­toms of­fi­cers about them. Shep­pard said yes­ter­day a de­c­la­ra­tion should be writ­ten, as these forms were the doc­u­ments that were pre­sent­ed to Cus­toms of­fi­cers. "But that's a make-up form.

The form lim­its the cat­e­go­ry of de­scrip­tion of firearms," Quin­lan in­ter­ject­ed. On this note, she said the court could not ac­cept Nor­man's guilty plea, and at­tempt­ed to start a tri­al. At­tor­ney An­tho­ny Cher­ry made an ap­pli­ca­tion for Nor­man's bail con­di­tions to be var­ied. This was grant­ed, and Nor­man was told he was no longer con­fined to his ves­sel. His pass­port re­mains in the hands of po­lice, and the mat­ter was ad­journed to Fri­day.

?More in­fo:

?Nor­man, who ar­rived in T&T last Wednes­day from Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da, docked at Crews Inn, Ch­aguara­mas. He de­clared two Win­ches­ter shot­guns and 1,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. When the ves­sel was searched, how­ev­er, it was re­alised that the ri­fles and am­mu­ni­tion found on the boat were not de­clared. Fif­teen peo­ple were on the ves­sel at the time, but three have since re­turned to the US.