PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – Jamaat al Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr has failed in his efforts to get compensation from government for what he said was malicious prosecution for a 1998 murder.
Bakr had previously lost a lawsuit which he filed against the state after he was charged in 2010 and then freed because of lack of evidence in the killing of a former member of his Muslim organization, Israel Sammy.
He filed a constitutional motion and malicious prosecution claims, arguing his constitutional rights were infringed.
But High Court Judge Frank Seepersad dismissed his claim, saying Bakr failed to show that his constitutional rights were infringed by coroner Nalini Singh when she ordered he and another man be charged with killing the 22-year-old Sammy behind his home on May 20, 1998.
Court of Appeal judges Rajendra Narine, Prakash Moosai and Judith Jones not only threw out the appeal but ordered Bakr to pay the state’s legal cost.
The murder charge against Bakr was dropped a month after it was filed, after Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard said there was insufficient evidence to sustain it.