Fran­cis Joseph

Five peo­ple, in­clud­ing a woman and a 15-year-old boy, ap­peared in court yes­ter­day, charged with be­ing in il­le­gal pos­ses­sion of an AK-47 as­sault ri­fle and 48 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. But their court ap­pear­ance was very low-key, com­pared with their ar­rests last Thurs­day when act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert, at a news con­fer­ence, an­nounced that the po­lice had foiled a plot by lo­cal ter­ror­ists to dis­rupt the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion. But the five peo­ple who ap­peared in court were not charged with any­thing else ex­cept the gun and am­mu­ni­tion charges. At­tor­ney Kei­th Scot­land, who rep­re­sent­ed three of the de­fen­dants, said the five had been de­tained for too long. He said this was a case of sim­ple pos­ses­sion, and point­ed out that the de­fen­dants had not been linked to any­thing else in the coun­try.

The five who ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate In­dar Ja­groop in the Port-of-Spain First Mag­is­trates' Court, were Cofi O'Brien, 27, and his com­mon-law wife, Jamil­la Quan Singh, 22, both of Mc Ken­zie Dri­ve, Point Cu­mu­na, Care­nage; Dwayne Bou­caud, 21, of Ari­api­ta Road, St Ann's; Os­aya­ba Mo­hammed, 28, of Thorn­hill Street, Bel­mont, and the 15-year-old sec­ondary school stu­dent. It was al­leged that on May 13, at Mc Ken­zie Dri­ve, Point Cu­mu­na, the five had in their pos­ses­sion, an AK-47 ri­fle and 48 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

Scot­land, who ap­peared with Daniel Khan, John Heath, and Jonathan Mur­ray, then plead­ed for bail for the de­fen­dants. He asked that the court be cleared so he could deal with the stu­dent. This was done. The boy's par­ents were al­lowed to re­main in court as Scot­land said that the teenag­er was prepar­ing to choose his sub­jects for Form Four at sec­ondary school. He said the boy was not a limer and was mon­i­tored by his par­ents. The mag­is­trate in­quired from the boy's step­fa­ther, a fire­man, if this was in fact so. He then grant­ed the boy $100,000 bail to be ap­proved by the Clerk of the Peace.

The mag­is­trate al­so grant­ed bail to the oth­ers in the sum of $100,000. Their pass­ports must be sur­ren­dered as a con­di­tion for bail, while the three men must re­port to the po­lice sta­tion in their dis­trict every Mon­day, Wednes­day and Sat­ur­day, be­tween 7 am and 7 pm. The mag­is­trate warned that if the con­di­tions were not met, bail would be re­voked. The re­port­ing con­di­tion did not ap­ply to Quan Singh, who ac­cord­ing to her at­tor­ney Heath, was hos­pi­talised af­ter she was de­tained. Heath said his client suf­fered from epilep­sy and was on­ly re­leased from hos­pi­tal on Mon­day. Be­cause the mat­ter end­ed at 3.30 pm, it was touch-and-go to see if the bail would be grant­ed yes­ter­day af­ter­noon be­fore clos­ing time of the court. The case was then ad­journed to May 28.