The mother of three of the nine boys allegedly raped by Muslim scholar Nezaam Ali is calling for his trials to be conducted urgently.
“I would like to appeal to whoever is in charge because this new year is nine years and I think it is time now,” the woman told Sunday Stabroek.
The frustrated woman said that she was assured that the matters will be heard in the current Demerara criminal assizes but to date no one has contacted her. All nine matters are included among the 260 matters that are to be heard in the current criminal session, which opened earlier this month. While the matters are at the bottom of the list, this newspaper was told that the cases are not called in the order that they are printed.
Speaking to this newspaper recently, the emotional woman explained that one the matters was scheduled to be heard last October. She said that for two days, one of her sons, who is now 15-years-old, was being prepared for the start of the trial as he visited the court to go over his statement.
She noted that each matter is being tried individually and the one involving the teen was identified as the first.
“When we go, we were told that [Justice Jo-Ann] Barlow advised the cases and her signatures were on the jacket and she can’t try the case… [that] she knows everything about it and it would be a conflict of interest,” the mother said, before adding that it was an injustice to her son to have him going over his statement for two days only to be told that the matter could no longer be heard.
She questioned why this problem was not picked up before and why the case was not assigned to another judge. Sunday Stabroek has since been able to confirm that Barlow was the only judge assigned to deal with sexual offences cases at that time and as a result no other judge could have heard the matter.
The woman said that she has since learnt that Justice Barlow while at the DPP’s Chambers handled the matters and that she was the one who advised on the charges. As such, she is unable to hear any of the cases.
“Why assign the matter to her? Why they keep pushing me around?” the mother asked before noting that the DPP’s Chambers should have picked up on the conflict of interest before beginning preparations to have her son testify.
Despite his disappointment at the development, the woman said her son still wants to testify.
“He went two days…He went to the outpost at the High Court going over his statement with the state counsel. He had made up his mind to go through with it but he got down after he was told that we have to wait until the next assizes. He was disappointed,” she said before stressing that she is unhappy at how he has been treated and how the matter is being handled.
Ali, of South Turkeyen, was charged in 2012 with raping nine boys. The charges alleged that between December, 2011 and January, 2012, Ali, being a teacher attached to the Turkeyen Masjid, engaged in sexual activity with the children, abusing a position of trust.
The allegations of abuse first came to light when the Child Care and Protection Agency (CC&PA) received an anonymous tip and officials there began an investigation that led them to the boys, who were then between the ages of four and ten.
The police were informed and after the boys were examined, Ali, who was employed with the Central Islamic Organisation of Guyana (CIOG), was arrested, released on station bail and subsequently charged. Ali was also sent on leave, pending the outcome of the case.
Ali was committed to stand trial in 2014 by Magistrate Alex Moore but shortly after, his lawyer, Nigel Hughes, filed an action in the High Court to have the committal overturned. However, this was rejected by the court.
It was during a visit to the Supreme Court in January, 2017, that the mother of three of the boys and an official from CCPA discovered that the birth certificates and medical reports for the boys were missing from each of the nine files.
The files were later reconstructed and the case reopened. In February last year, Moore recommitted Ali to stand trial in the High Court.
