Jensen La Vende 

Se­nior Re­porter 

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt 

Cana­di­an vlog­ger Christo­pher “Chris Must List” Hugh­es was grant­ed $100,000 bail when he ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Mar­garet Sookraj-Goswa­mi yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, the 45-year-old fa­ther of three from On­tario, Cana­da, who was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, was tak­en to the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San­ta Rosa af­ter the hear­ing. While Hugh­es was giv­en the op­tion to ac­cess his free­dom with cash of $10,000, it was un­clear if he was able to post bail up to late last evening. If this was not done, it meant that the Cana­di­an na­tion­al would have spent the night in prison.

As part of his bail, Hugh­es, who is charged with pub­lish­ing a sedi­tious pub­li­ca­tion on May 29, will have his pass­port sur­ren­dered to the court and re­main in the coun­try.

Hugh­es was first or­dered in­to the care of Dar­nell Salden­ha but the com­plainant found that he had three drug-re­lat­ed mat­ters in the past, which Salden­ha said all end­ed with a rep­ri­mand and dis­charge. In the end, Hugh­es’ for­mer at­tor­ney Criston Williams vol­un­teered for him to stay at his house.

Up­on his re­lease, he will spend a few days at Williams’ Diego Mar­tin home un­til the mat­ter is re­called on Thurs­day.

Ram­lo­gan told Sookraj-Goswa­mi that he would be tak­ing the State to court for a breach of his client’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, which he said may in­val­i­date the charge.

He made the com­ment dur­ing his bail ap­pli­ca­tion and the breach of his client’s rights af­ford­ed to him un­der the coun­try’s laws. He ar­gued that the State, if it de­nied his client bail, may have placed his life in dan­ger fol­low­ing a me­dia re­port that Hugh­es was tak­en on a ride with po­lice to iden­ti­fy gangs and gang spots. He said while the sto­ry was false, the gang­sters in the prison may not have seen the cor­rec­tion pub­lished af­ter­wards and la­belled Hugh­es as a po­lice in­for­mant.

He chas­tised the State for on­ly re­quest­ing his in­ter­na­tion­al record from In­ter­pol last Sat­ur­day, four days af­ter he was ar­rest­ed.

State at­tor­ney Danielle Thomp­son said the lo­cal In­ter­pol of­fi­cers on­ly made a re­quest to the Cana­di­an In­ter­pol yes­ter­day and she could not say when a re­port on his crim­i­nal record will be avail­able.

Ram­lo­gan sub­mit­ted that Hugh­es on­ly had one mat­ter, which was dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol. He stressed his client was not a flight risk and had the means to re­main in the coun­try pend­ing the out­come of his mat­ter.

Thomp­son asked for a short ad­journ­ment to Thurs­day to get in­struc­tions from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions on how to pro­ceed.

Hugh­es’ mat­ter can pro­ceed ei­ther sum­mar­i­ly, which car­ries a lighter penal­ty of a $3,000 fine or two years im­pris­on­ment, or in­dictably, which car­ries a $20,000 fine or five years in jail.

Wear­ing a black T-shirt with Trinidad print­ed on it, Hugh­es shook his head in agree­ment as Ram­lo­gan said the charge was a case of “putting a plas­ter on a fes­ter­ing so­ci­etal sore”. Ram­lo­gan sub­mit­ted that rather than ar­rest­ing the sup­posed gang­sters fea­tured in Hugh­es’ videos, the State ar­rest­ed the mes­sen­ger and was throw­ing the ba­by out with the bath wa­ter.