Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

En­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS), Gary Aboud, is set to go on tri­al on Sep­tem­ber 18th, over al­le­ga­tions that he breached COVID-19 Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions dur­ing a protest in Port-of-Spain near­ly five years ago.

The tri­al date was fixed yes­ter­day when the mat­ter came up be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Deb­o­rah Quintin at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court.

Aboud, who is rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Ian Brooks, is ac­cused of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a gath­er­ing that ex­ceed­ed the num­ber of peo­ple per­mit­ted un­der emer­gency pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions in place dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The charges arise from a protest held on No­vem­ber 30, 2021, at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, where po­lice said they ob­served a gath­er­ing of about 100 peo­ple.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, no per­mis­sion had been grant­ed for the event and of­fi­cers moved in on the crowd, lead­ing to ar­rests and charges.

Aboud was among 31 peo­ple charged. Among oth­ers charged were Amit Sook­nanan, Umar Ab­dul­lah, David Welch, Di­nash Ra­goo and Et­ta Vil­lafana.

The protest was held dur­ing a pe­ri­od when strict lim­its were placed on pub­lic gath­er­ings un­der COVID-19 emer­gency reg­u­la­tions, with demon­stra­tors voic­ing op­po­si­tion to pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions and oth­er gov­ern­ment poli­cies.

The case forms part of a se­ries of pros­e­cu­tions aris­ing from pub­lic demon­stra­tions dur­ing the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od.