Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion Fuad Abu Bakr may be slapped with charges un­der the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.

Bakr was ar­rest­ed by po­lice just af­ter 10 am at the cor­ner of Besson Street as res­i­dents of the area faced off with po­lice of­fi­cers, call­ing for jus­tice for the three men who were killed over the week­end by law­men.

Sev­en hours af­ter his ar­rest, Bakr’s at­tor­ney-at-law, Chris­ton Williams, said he was un­able to get in con­tact with his client.

Ac­cord­ing to the at­tor­ney, “We have made se­ri­ous at­tempts to find him be­cause we have been told where he is but no one at the sta­tion will con­firm or have the re­spect to in­di­cate that he is here pur­suant to of­fence A, B, C that has not been done”.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands it was on­ly at around 6 pm, Williams got con­fir­ma­tion that Bakr was be­ing de­tained at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

Up to press time no charges were laid against Bakr how­ev­er, his at­tor­ney was ex­pect­ed to ap­ply for a habeas cor­pus for his re­lease.

Bakr’s fa­ther, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, de­fend­ed his son say­ing he was on­ly try­ing to bring peace to a very ag­i­tat­ed sit­u­a­tion.

“There is a video that is very clear he was film­ing and the vo­cals says he is say­ing to the peo­ple to calm down”, he told the me­dia at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

He added, “If he is speak­ing on be­half of some peo­ple than all politi­cians can be ar­rest­ed and charged be­cause he is the leader of the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion and all politi­cians claim to speak on be­half of the peo­ple”.

Giv­en the lat­est po­lice-in­volved in­ci­dents, Abu Bakr said he un­der­stands why ten­sions are high among the pop­u­la­tion but cau­tioned against fight­ing with the po­lice.