DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Em­bat­tled Cana­di­an YouTu­ber Christo­pher “Chris Must List” Hugh­es will be able to par­tic­i­pate in his next court hear­ing of his sedi­tion case vir­tu­al­ly.

A bail con­di­tion re­quir­ing Hugh­es to re­turn to Trinidad for the con­tin­u­a­tion of his case was var­ied when Hugh­es ap­peared be­fore High Court Judge In­drani Ce­de­no, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Jus­tice Ce­de­no al­so or­dered the re­lease of Hugh­es’ pass­port, which he sur­ren­dered when he re­turned to this coun­try late last month for a court hear­ing.

De­spite the vari­a­tion of his bail con­di­tions, Hugh­es was not able to im­me­di­ate­ly de­part.

Last Sat­ur­day, Hugh­es was de­tained by im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials af­ter Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds deemed him an “un­de­sir­able in­hab­i­tant” un­der the Im­mi­gra­tion Act and is­sued a de­por­ta­tion or­der against him.

His lawyers Jagdeo Singh, Ger­ald Ramdeen, and Vashisht Seep­er­sad filed a case seek­ing ac­cess to him at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo and then sought an in­junc­tion block­ing his pro­posed de­por­ta­tion.

Af­ter Hugh­es was or­dered re­leased by High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed pend­ing the out­come of his pro­posed im­mi­gra­tion case, he was placed on an or­der of su­per­vi­sion, which re­quired him to pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly re­port to im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials.

Le­gal sources said that de­spite the vari­a­tion of his bail con­di­tions, Hugh­es would not be able to law­ful­ly de­part the court un­til the su­per­vi­sion or­der is lift­ed.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Hugh­es’ le­gal team was ex­pect­ed to write to the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer re­quest­ing the move.

In the event that the re­quest is not ac­ced­ed to, his lawyers would have to pur­sue lit­i­ga­tion over the is­sue.

In May, Hugh­es, a 45-year-old fa­ther of three, was charged with pub­lish­ing a state­ment with sedi­tious in­tent.

The charges re­late to videos Hugh­es post­ed on his trav­el vlog dur­ing a lengthy vis­it to this coun­try, ear­li­er this year.

He plead­ed not guilty to the of­fence and was grant­ed $100,000 bail. His bail was sub­se­quent­ly var­ied to al­low him to leave the coun­try and re­turn for court.

The sedi­tion case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing be­fore Mag­is­trate Charles on Jan­u­ary 14 when a tri­al date is ex­pect­ed to be set.

Ear­ly last week he was briefly held by the po­lice as part of an al­leged mon­ey laun­der­ing probe. How­ev­er, he was re­leased with­out be­ing charged.