Jensen La Vende 

Cana­di­an vlog­ger Christo­pher “Christ Must List” Hugh­es says will be ini­ti­at­ing le­gal ac­tion against the State, af­ter he was held for 12 hours on Thurs­day on al­le­ga­tions that he had in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to mon­ey laun­der­ing. 

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Hugh­es said he feels trapped here in T&T and will be do­ing what is nec­es­sary to pro­tect his free­dom. 

“With the sup­port of Jagdeo Singh, Ger­ald Ramdeen and Vashisht Seep­er­sad of For­tis Cham­bers, I will be ini­ti­at­ing civ­il pro­ceed­ings against the po­lice force im­me­di­ate­ly. I am al­so reach­ing out to lead­ing hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tions world­wide to share my sto­ry and ex­pose the cor­rup­tion and abuse of pow­er I am fac­ing. Yet, un­til I am free, I re­main a pris­on­er of fear—trapped, si­lenced, and des­per­ate­ly seek­ing jus­tice.” 

Hugh­es was held at a Diego Mar­tin house and his Ap­ple lap­top, iPhone, portable hard dri­ve, Go­Pro cam­era and oth­er de­vices were seized on Thurs­day. 

Hugh­es, who is out on $100,000 bail af­ter he was charged with pub­lish­ing a sedi­tious state­ment in May, said yes­ter­day he faces un­just treat­ment in the coun­try. 

He added that af­ter over ten po­lice of­fi­cers raid­ed a Diego Mar­tin home he was stay­ing in and seized his elec­tron­ics, they re­main in po­lice cus­tody. 

“I live in con­stant fear—fear that I will nev­er see my wife and chil­dren again, fear that I will nev­er get my pass­port back, and fear that my ba­sic hu­man rights are be­ing tram­pled up­on in a coun­try where I am clear­ly be­ing tar­get­ed. My fam­i­ly re­lies on me, and here I am, stuck and pow­er­less, wait­ing for the next at­tempt to take away my free­dom. What will they come for next?

“Will I be de­tained to­mor­row? Next week? How long must I live in this un­cer­tain­ty, not know­ing when I will be free to leave?” 

Hugh­es’ at­tor­neys al­so filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest, ask­ing that the po­lice pro­duce the sworn to in­for­ma­tion by con­sta­ble Joshua Archie that was used to pro­cure the search war­rant. They are al­so seek­ing copies of all sta­tion di­ary ex­tracts in re­la­tion to the ex­e­cu­tion of the search war­rant and ar­rest and de­ten­tion; copies of all di­ary notes tak­en by po­lice dur­ing the search; and copies of all state­ments, in­ter­view notes, ques­tions and an­swers, tak­en dur­ing Hugh­es’s de­ten­tion. 

Hugh­es’ sedi­tion mat­ter will be heard in Jan­u­ary. He re­mains in the coun­try un­til the court re­leas­es his pass­port and grants him per­mis­sion to leave in ac­cor­dance with his bail.