Academic David Hinds has been named as the first witness for Kaieteur News columnist Freddie Kissoon in the $10M libel case brought against him by former president Bharrat Jagdeo.
But Hinds was unable to take the stand for the defence yesterday after Justice Brassington Reynolds took a decision to adjourn the proceedings owing to the unavailability of Jagdeo’s lead attorney, Senior Counsel Bernard De Santos, who had a scheduled engagement before the Court of Appeal.
When the matter was first called before Justice Reynolds at the scheduled time, defence attorney Latoya Hobbs-Nurse indicated that her senior Nigel Hughes was dealing with another matter in another court.
After a brief discourse between Hobbs-Nurse and Jagdeo’s other attorney, Sase Gunraj, it was decided that the case would be adjourned until September 27, although the court was told that a witness was present.
Later Hughes approached the court and requested that Hinds take the stand. After Justice Reynolds completed some divorce matters, the case was called for a second time. Hughes, who is representing Kissoon, who has been named along with Kaieteur News Editor Adam Harris and owner Glen Lall in the suit, indicated to the court that Hinds, who works abroad, travelled to Guyana on Thursday night so that he could testify in the case. He said that before he could have travelled here, they had to request that Hinds be granted academic leave. No lawyer for Jagdeo was present at the second hearing.
The judge then adjourned the matter for a few minutes to make an attempt to contact De Santos. When he returned, Justice Reynolds said that he did get in touch with the attorney, who was still engaged in the High Court.
It was stated that De Santos said that while he would have preferred to be present when the evidence is given, the court could have proceeded without him. However, Reynolds noted that because of the nature of the case, he preferred not to hear it under the present circumstances. As a result, he stuck to the previously given adjourned date.
The libel suit against the trio was sparked by a June 28, 2010 article, titled ‘King Kong sent his goons to disrupt the conference.’ Jagdeo’s suit contends that the article portrayed him as an ideological racist. During the case, which has been before the court for a year, Jagdeo brought three witnesses; Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon and OP media monitors Raul Kissoon and Jason Abdulla.
Moments after Jagdeo’s legal team closed its case in July, Hughes told reporters that they would field more than a dozen witnesses to prove that Jagdeo was an “ideological racist.” At that time, he said that the witnesses would be called over a six month period.
