Derek Achong

A date for the sedi­tion tri­al of Cana­di­an Youtu­ber Christo­pher "Chris Must List" Hugh­es is ex­pect­ed to be set in Jan­u­ary, next year. 

Act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles gave the in­di­ca­tion as Hugh­es reap­peared be­fore her this morn­ing. 

Hugh­es re­quest­ed a lengthy ad­journ­ment as he said that he has trips booked in­clud­ing to Africa and could on­ly re­turn to Trinidad af­ter Jan­u­ary 7. 

Hugh­es al­so en­quired whether he could par­tic­i­pate in the case via video con­fer­enc­ing while con­tin­u­ing his trav­els. 

Mag­is­trate Charles said she had no pow­er to vary his bail con­di­tions in­clud­ing one that re­quires him to re­turn to this coun­try for each court ap­pear­ance. She ad­vised him to ap­ply to the High Court for a vari­a­tion. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, at­tor­ney Rus­sell Warn­er, who was among the team of at­tor­neys which rep­re­sent­ed Hugh­es in pre­vi­ous hear­ings, ap­plied for him, Pamela El­der, SC, and Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, to with­draw from the case. 

"We are re­gret­tably at an im­passe with Mr Hugh­es and are forced to with­draw," Warn­er said. 

The ap­pli­ca­tion was grant­ed. 

Ear­li­er this week, Hugh­es in­di­cat­ed that he would rep­re­sent him­self af­ter he re­ceived a US$50,000 in­voice from some mem­bers of his le­gal team. 

He re­it­er­at­ed the po­si­tion be­fore Mag­is­trate Charles. 

"For the time be­ing I am go­ing to stand be­fore the court and de­fend my­self," he said. 

How­ev­er, he did not rule out re­tain­ing an­oth­er at­tor­ney be­fore the case goes to tri­al. 

"I will make a de­ci­sion be­fore the next hear­ing," he said. 

Mag­is­trate Charles warned him of the po­ten­tial con­se­quences if he is even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed. 

"The max­i­mum penal­ty is a term of im­pris­on­ment of two years," she said. 

Be­fore ad­journ­ing the case to Jan­u­ary 14, Mag­is­trate Charles set dead­lines for pros­e­cu­tors from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to file and serve the re­main­ing ev­i­dence against Hugh­es. 

Pros­e­cu­tor Va­lene Guer­ra-Abra­ham in­di­cat­ed that the "bulk" of the ev­i­dence had been dis­closed ex­cept two to three wit­ness state­ments. The re­main­ing ev­i­dence is ex­pect­ed to be dis­closed by the end of next month. 

In May, Hugh­es, a 45-year-old fa­ther of three, was charged with pub­lish­ing a state­ment with a sedi­tious in­tent. 

The charges re­late to videos Hugh­es post­ed dur­ing a lengthy vis­it to this coun­try, ear­li­er this year. 

He plead­ed not guilty to the of­fence and was grant­ed $100,000 bail. His bail was sub­se­quent­ly var­ied to al­low him to leave the coun­try and re­turn for court.