Lawyer: He told his followers not to steal and rob

Jamaat-al-Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr’s controversial 2005 Eid-ul-Fitr sermon sought to eradicate poverty in the local Muslim community. So said his attorney Wayne Sturge as he continued his closing address to the nine-member jury in Bakr’s sedition trial yesterday. “Bakr is an imam who was educating his flock, using imagery and examples to illustrate a point of the need for rich Muslims to pay zakaat to eliminate poverty in the community,” Sturge said. Zakaat, which is sometimes referred to as the third pillar of Islam, requires Muslims to donate a portion of their wealth to specific charities. 

 

 

Sturge said at no point in his hour-long speech did Bakr tell his followers to rob or steal from members of the community. “Instead, he told his followers, not to steal and rob. He told them if they stole they should give back the items,” Sturge said. He suggested when his client referred to war in his sermon he did not mean it literally but was instead using figurative language to make a point.  Bakr, 70, also known as Lennox Phillip, is before Justice Mark Mohammed in the Port-of-Spain Third Assizes on four criminal charges stemming from the sermon.

 

 

The charges are communicating a statement with a seditious intent, endeavouring to provoke a breach of the peace and two charges of inciting others to demand money by menace.  While making his plea for the jury to not convict Bakr, Sturge again claimed his criminal prosecution was a politically motivated conspiracy.  He said by his calculations, less that five per cent of his client’s sermon was allegedly seditious. He appealed to the jurors to interpret the entire sermon and not focus only on the controversial excerpts.Sturge described the offence of sedition as rare, noting that the last person to be charged with it in T&T was in 1972. Sturge is expected to complete is address today with special prosecutor Dana Seetahal, SC, starting the State’s address in the case on Monday.