-Delays High Court bail review 

-by Kimberly Giddings

Attorney General Anil Nandlall has challenged the affidavit filed by Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed’s mother, Bonita Mohamed, arguing that it contains hearsay, irrelevant information and unsupported allegations.

During Wednesday’s High Court hearing, Justice Priscilla Chandra-Haniff raised concerns about the filing, prompting Mohamed’s lawyers to seek additional time to address the deficiencies.

The AG is seeking to have substantial portions of Bonita Mohamed’s affidavit struck out, arguing that much of the evidence is legally inadmissible.

He contends that Mohamed’s mother failed to establish personal knowledge of several claims made in support of her son’s challenge to the refusal of bail.

Nandlall maintains that the court cannot rely on hearsay or unsupported allegations when determining a judicial review application.

“The affidavit is absolutely defective from many, many respects. The court cannot act upon the affidavitso I have filed an application to strike the affidavit out or to strike the relevant paragraph. The affidavit has 146 paragraphs, maybe 6 is proper, 140 will go, will have to go by law. If 140 out of a 146 go, there is no case left in the fixed date application,” he said.
Nandlall said Mohamed’s lawyers are now seeking to introduce a separate affidavit from their client, which he argued should have been filed initially.

However, he maintained that the court must first determine his application to strike out portions of the original affidavit before the case can proceed.

“So you heard the timelines given, the court has to first rule on my application and if I’m successful and I strike out the paragraphs that I’m asking to be struck out then I have to be given leave to file a defence because we will now understand what is their case. supplementary application can’t constitute the case when there’s a main affidavit left on the record. So we have to determine what the case is based on the 2 applications that will now be on the record, one from Azruddin Mohamed and one from Bonita Mohamed but the court has to rule on Bonita Mohamed, the mother,” he explained.

Mohamed’s attorneys, Sanjeev Dhurjon and Roysdale Forde, have until 6 p.m. Wednesday to submit a fresh application.

The Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions are expected to file their responses by November 17, with oral submissions scheduled for November 23.

Mohamed is challenging Magistrate Abigail Gibbs’ decision to deny him bail on a cybercrime charge linked to the alleged unlawful acquisition of Safe City CCTV footage.

He and Police Constable Ryan Greene were remanded to prison over allegations involving an $800,000 payment for the footage.

Mohamed remains on bail in separate extradition proceedings.