Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The fa­ther of three men await­ing tri­al for the mur­der of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal has been dis­charged on an ex­tor­tion charge af­ter de­lays in pros­e­cut­ing the case.

Has­san Ali, Bal­matie Har­ry and Isa­iah Mc Don­ald Har­g­reaves were dis­charged by High Court Mas­ter Lisa Singh-Phillip on Tues­day. She up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion made by their lawyer, Roshan To­ta-Ma­haraj.

The trio had been charged with de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace and ac­cused of at­tempt­ing to ex­tort $200,000 from a man from Cara­po.

The al­leged de­mands were made be­tween Oc­to­ber and De­cem­ber 2019, af­ter the man’s son was charged with mur­der­ing a neigh­bour. The man al­leged that the trio said the mon­ey was com­pen­sa­tion for his son’s al­leged vic­tim, who was Mus­lim.

The trio were grant­ed bail, but Ali was barred from en­ter­ing the part of Cara­po where the mosque at which he is imam is lo­cat­ed. In 2022, To­ta-Ma­haraj suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied to have Ali’s bail con­di­tions var­ied so he could re­turn to the mosque while the charge re­mained pend­ing.

The case was ini­tial­ly be­fore the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates’ Court. It was lat­er trans­ferred to Mas­ter Singh-Phillip af­ter the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA) was pro­claimed in De­cem­ber 2023. The leg­is­la­tion re­placed pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries be­fore mag­is­trates with suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ings be­fore High Court mas­ters.

The suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing was sched­uled for No­vem­ber 25.

At a case-man­age­ment hear­ing this week, the pros­e­cu­tor sought an ex­ten­sion to dis­close the po­lice file com­piled by the of­fi­cer who charged the trio. The pros­e­cu­tor said he had re­peat­ed­ly tried to con­tact the of­fi­cer and had al­so con­tact­ed the of­fi­cer’s su­per­vi­sors to ob­tain the file, but it had not been re­ceived. The of­fi­cer did not at­tend the hear­ing.

In re­sponse, To­ta-Ma­haraj point­ed out that un­der AJI­PA, the ap­pli­ca­tion should have been made two weeks be­fore the hear­ing. He ques­tioned whether an ad­journ­ment would help, giv­en the of­fi­cer’s pre­vi­ous con­duct, and said it was un­like­ly the of­fi­cer would com­ply be­fore next month’s suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing.

To­ta-Ma­haraj said his clients had faced the charge for al­most sev­en years and want­ed clo­sure and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to clear their names.

Mas­ter Singh-Phillip agreed with To­ta-Ma­haraj and ex­er­cised her dis­cre­tion to dis­charge the three men.

Ali’s sons, Ra­jaee, Ishamael and Hamid, are await­ing tri­al along­side sev­en oth­er men for See­ta­hal’s mur­der.

See­ta­hal was shot dead be­hind the wheel of her SUV while dri­ving along Hamil­ton Hold­er Street, Wood­brook, on May 4, 2014.

In De­cem­ber 2017, the mur­der charge against one of the men ini­tial­ly in­clud­ed in the group was dis­con­tin­ued af­ter he be­came a State wit­ness. He was in­stead charged with con­spir­a­cy to mur­der See­ta­hal.

The group was com­mit­ted to stand tri­al at the end of their pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry on Ju­ly 23, 2020.