The Trini­bad artiste who post­ed threat­en­ing videos tar­get­ing sup­port­ers of a par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal par­ty will know his fate on May 7.

Bradlee Dha­naram, 35, of San­ta Flo­ra, plead­ed guilty be­fore Siparia Mag­is­trate Glo­ria Jas­math on Wednes­day and was grant­ed $10,000 own bail.

Dha­naram was ar­rest­ed last Fri­day dur­ing a TTPS Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Unit in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion. Fol­low­ing ad­vice from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, he was charged on Mon­day un­der Reg­u­la­tion 12(a) of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, out­lined in Le­gal No­tice No. 240 un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.

The charge—mak­ing state­ments to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty—was based on videos that cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly across so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

In a mit­i­ga­tion plea for le­nien­cy, Dha­naram’s at­tor­ney, Frank Git­tens, said his client—an en­ter­tain­er and labour­er—did not ful­ly com­pre­hend the con­se­quences of his words, which in­cit­ed vi­o­lence.

Git­tens told the court that Dha­naram was re­morse­ful and that the elec­tion “brought out a cer­tain pas­sion” which he mis­di­rect­ed and failed to man­age. He added that Dha­naram, a fa­ther of three, now has a bet­ter ap­pre­ci­a­tion for cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, in­clud­ing free­dom of thought, ex­pres­sion, and the right to sup­port any po­lit­i­cal par­ty of their choice.

The of­fence car­ries a max­i­mum penal­ty, on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, of a $100,000 fine and five years’ im­pris­on­ment.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to May 7 for sen­tenc­ing.