Guyana’s Opposition Leader granted $.75M bail

Guyana’s Op­po­si­tion Leader Azrud­din Mo­hamed was grant­ed GUY$750,000 (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) bail on Fri­day, af­ter he ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Faith Mc­Gusty at the George­town Mag­is­trates’ Court on gun-re­lat­ed crimes.

Mo­hamed and two of his em­ploy­ees, who al­so were grant­ed bail of GUY$750,000 each, have been joint­ly charged with the il­le­gal pos­ses­sion of one .32 pis­tol, il­le­gal pos­ses­sion three match­ing rounds, and at­tempt­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice by dis­charg­ing a firearm in the vicin­i­ty of the head of Po­lice Spe­cial Branch, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Prem Nar­ine.

Each of­fence car­ried bail of GUY$250,000 and the court has set sev­er­al bail con­di­tions in­clud­ing that the ac­cused men stay away the area where Nar­ine lives.

The charges against the three fol­lowed what po­lice said was a shoot­ing in­ci­dent out­side Nar­ine’s on Mon­day night.

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions ad­vised on Thurs­day night that Mo­hamed, Mario Mo­hammed and Eu­gene Thorne be charged joint­ly fol­low­ing their ar­rest even as Mo­hamed, through his at­tor­ney, has de­nied all of the al­le­ga­tions.

The po­lice had said that Nar­ine was at his res­i­dence when he re­port­ed that he ob­served a black Toy­ota Al­lion mo­tor car bear­ing reg­is­tra­tion num­ber PXX 5300 trav­el­ling slow­ly along Barr Street.

“In­ves­ti­ga­tions fur­ther re­vealed that as the ve­hi­cle ap­proached his res­i­dence on the sec­ond oc­ca­sion, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Nar­ine heard what ap­peared to be a gun­shot. He took cov­er and dis­charged sev­er­al rounds from his ser­vice firearm in the di­rec­tion of the ve­hi­cle, which sub­se­quent­ly drove away.”

The po­lice said the mo­tor car was lat­er in­ter­cept­ed with three oc­cu­pants who were lat­er iden­ti­fied as ac­cused men were ar­rest­ed and es­cort­ed to the Kit­ty Po­lice Sta­tion.

But dur­ing the brief court hear­ing, the de­fence at­tor­neys chal­lenged the pros­e­cu­tion’s case, ar­gu­ing that the firearm was dis­cov­ered un­der dis­put­ed cir­cum­stances and that there were ques­tions about how the ve­hi­cle was searched and han­dled be­fore the weapon was re­port­ed­ly found.

They told the court that the ve­hi­cle was ini­tial­ly searched at the scene and noth­ing was found, ar­gu­ing fur­ther that the firearm was dis­cov­ered dur­ing a sub­se­quent search at the po­lice sta­tion, af­ter of­fi­cers had tak­en con­trol of the ve­hi­cle.

The pros­e­cu­tion had op­posed the ap­pli­ca­tion, ar­gu­ing that the charges were se­ri­ous and that the case in­volved is­sues that re­quired fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The pros­e­cu­tor main­tained that the ev­i­dence and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent sup­port­ed the charges at this stage, while stress­ing that the de­fence’s ar­gu­ments about the ev­i­dence would have to be test­ed as the mat­ter pro­gressed.

The Guyana gov­ern­ment said the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Jus­tice is be­ing kept in­formed of what it de­scribed as “these star­tling de­vel­op­ments” af­ter it in­di­cat­ing that it had not­ed “with deep con­cern, the at­tempt to per­vert the facts sur­round­ing the se­ri­ous in­ci­dent that oc­curred” ear­li­er this week in­volv­ing Mo­hamed.

“No amount of ob­fus­ca­tion, con­coc­tion or Face­book trolling will be al­lowed to con­tra­dict the fac­tu­al­ly ver­i­fi­able nar­ra­tive and the far reach­ing le­gal im­pli­ca­tions that en­sue. The law must be al­lowed to take its course,” the gov­ern­ment said in a state­ment.

Mo­hamed and his busi­ness­man fa­ther, Nazar Mo­hamed, were in­dict­ed in the Unit­ed States in Oc­to­ber 2025 on charges in­clud­ing wire/mail fraud, mon­ey laun­der­ing, and bribery linked to a US$50 mil­lion gold smug­gling and tax eva­sion scheme.

They are chal­leng­ing the coun­try’s ex­tra­di­tion treaty, and the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Fugi­tive Of­fend­ers Act.

Ear­li­er this week, the Court of Ap­peal said it is re­serv­ing its rul­ing in the con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge brought by the Mo­hameds. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)