Geisha Kow­lessar

Self-pro­claimed hu­man rights ac­tivist Ish­mael Samad yes­ter­day at­tempt­ed to break down the front gate of Calder Hart's home, in­sist­ing he was go­ing to ar­rest Hart and hand him over to the po­lice. Samad, armed with a sledge­ham­mer, ar­rived at Hart's res­i­dence–6 De Li­ma Road, Cas­cade–around noon. Tak­ing sev­er­al swipes at the au­to­mat­ic gate, which was heav­i­ly pad­locked, with the sledge­ham­mer Samad shout­ed: "Calder Hart come out. Come out now."

Samad al­so at­tempt­ed to smash the a re­mote con­trol de­vice at­tached to the gate. Dur­ing his rant­i­ng, Samad al­so ac­cused Hart of steal­ing mon­ey from the Gov­ern­ment. The com­mo­tion alert­ed sev­er­al neigh­bours who peered from be­hind their heav­i­ly bur­glar-proofed homes.

With­in 15 min­utes, a con­tin­gent of heav­i­ly-armed of­fi­cers from the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion ar­rived on the scene and at­tempt­ed to ar­rest the en­raged Samad. While he was be­ing whisked away by the law­men, po­lice said Samad re­port­ed­ly told them he was on­ly do­ing a "good deed" by at­tempt­ing to make a cit­i­zen's pow­er of ar­rest and hand over Hart to the po­lice.

Samad was then tak­en to the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion and in­ter­ro­gat­ed for sev­er­al hours. In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­turned to Hart's home lat­er yes­ter­day af­ter­noon and re­port­ed­ly ques­tioned his rel­a­tives who were present at the time of the in­ci­dent and al­so some of his neigh­bours.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors have es­ti­mat­ed dam­ages to the gate at $200,000.

Samad is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate to­day to an­swer charges of ma­li­cious dam­age and pos­ses­sion of house-break­ing im­ple­ments, name­ly a sledge-ham­mer.