By Mark DaCosta- The High Court has ruled that Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed may swear an affidavit in his own name in support of his bail application, a procedural decision with real consequences for a case that rests on competing accounts. Delivered on Wednesday 4 November by Justice Priscilla Chandra-Hanif, the ruling lets Mr Mohamed answer, through attorneys Siand Dhurjon and Roysdale Forde S.C, the matters raised in the affidavit his mother, Bonita Mohamed, filed on his behalf. It also signals that the court intends to pare that earlier document back to what is strictly necessary, and that the State must keep his detention from becoming oppressive.
The question of removing parts of the application by Mohamed’s mother drew the sharpest exchange. Attorney General Anil Nandlall urged the court to strike out roughly 33 of the affidavit’s 50 paragraphs, describing them as scandalous, vexatious and beyond the deponent’s personal knowledge. Affidavits are meant to carry facts a witness can attest to directly, and courts routinely cut passages that drift into argument or hearsay. Allowing Mohamed to speak for himself offers a practical remedy, since the contested assertions can now be restated by the person best placed to make them. The judge will rule separately on what is deleted.
The route to this point began on 2 November, when Bonita Mohamed filed a Fixed-Date Application asking the High Court to quash Magistrate Abigail Gibbs’s decision of 30 October refusing her son bail, and to admit him to bail on terms set by the court. Her affidavit argued that the magistrate misread the Cybercrime Act. In her account, the prosecution’s own particulars cast Azruddin Mohamed as the recipient of footage rather than the person who accessed a protected computer system and passed the data on. She contended that he had lawful justification, because the cameras were public and the recordings bore on his defence to earlier charges. She also questioned the 25-day remand, saying it exceeded a 21-day limit under the Criminal Law Procedure (Paper Committals) Act 2024, and alleged apparent bias, citing a claimed relationship between the magistrate and a police officer involved in the investigation. None of these claims has yet been tested in court.
The charge carries serious penalties on indictment: a fine of up to G$8 million and five years’ imprisonment. It stems from the alleged downloading of police footage of the 12 October shooting incident by Police Constable Ryan Greene, who is jointly charged, and its passage to Mohamed. Both men have pleaded not guilty and were remanded until 24 November. On November 3, Constable Ashton Chappelle faced the same charges and was remanded until November 24 when the trio will appear in court. Mohamed is separately on bail, alongside two others, for firearm and obstruction charges arising from the same incident. The video, which he played at a press conference last month, is said to challenge aspects of the Government’s version of events and prompted the police inquiry. Senior Superintendent Prem Narine, the officer at the centre of the incident, is also a key witness in the extradition proceedings involving Mohamed and his father. The matter therefore sits where security-sector conduct, an opposition leader’s liberty and a foreign extradition request meet, and our nation is watching how evenly the courts handle it.
Conditions of detention also came before the judge. Senior Counsel Forde told the court that Mohamed spends all but ten minutes of each day in what amounts to solitary confinement, in a poorly ventilated cell, and asked for an order against oppressive treatment. Attorney Dhurjon sought a transfer to police lock-ups and said a bright light shone on his client amounted to psychological abuse. Nandlall countered that Mohamed is held in a high-profile cell and produced photographs. The judge made no finding but said she expected the State and the prison service to ensure that his conditions are not oppressive.
The implications are twofold. Procedurally, the ruling widens the evidence on which bail will be argued while improving its quality, because a first-hand affidavit is harder to dismiss as hearsay. More broadly, the court’s remarks on detention remind us that remand does not suspend an accused person’s rights. Mohamed is presumed innocent, and the allegations against him and Constable Greene remain unproven. How the judge treats the disputed paragraphs, and then bail itself, will show whether our courts can handle a politically charged case with both rigour and restraint.
