-victim picks him out in court

A father of one, who allegedly accompanied a man to rob another man of a car at gunpoint, was remanded to prison yesterday when he appeared before Acting Chief Magistrate Melissa Robertson at the Georgetown Magis-trate’s Court.

Antonio Paul Persaud

Twenty-one-year-old Antonio Paul Persaud, of 56 Sandy Babb Street, Kitty, was not required to plead to the indictable charge of robbery under arms.

It is alleged that on February 20, at Nismes, West Bank Demerara, Persaud together with Krishna Persaud used a gun to rob Zamad Aladdin of a car valued over $2 million and $5,000.

However, Antonio Persaud’s lawyer Vic Puran said his client told him that while at the station, Aladdin denied ever seeing or knowing him and said he was not the person who had robbed him.

The lawyer stated that the allegation made against his client was a grave one and that on the day that the incident had allegedly occurred his client was in Berbice with his wife and baby along with his mother and father-in-law.

Puran noted that the police had an obligation to do a proper investigation into the matter “but the police didn’t investigate that piece of evidence”. The lawyer went on to say that no identification parade was ever conducted for Aladdin to identify his attackers.

“The police have been looking for another person and it clearly shows that they don’t know what is going on in the matter,” Puran said. He then applied for reasonable bail for his client.

However, Prosecutor Denise Griffith objected to the bail application and asked that the matter be transferred to the Wales Magistrate’s Court. She said that in terms of his alibi, Antonio Persaud did not say where exactly in Berbice he was and reasoned that the defence shouldn’t expect that the police were going to search the entire Berbice to find that out.

The prosecutor also stated that while Aladdin told the police that he had never known Antonio Persaud before the incident, he said that Persaud was indeed the person who had robbed him.

Antonio Persaud then told the court, “I was at Lot 229 Tucber Park, New Amsterdam” at the time of the robbery.

He said he had been imprisoned before for another matter and was released on February 6 this year. Since his release, he said, he had been in Berbice.

He told the court that the first time he had seen Aladdin was several weeks after the incident at a drinking bar.

However, Aladdin who was also in court, pointed to Antonio Persaud and stated, “I see de same face that rob me and tek de car away de night.”

The magistrate subsequently ordered that Antonio Persaud be remanded to prison and that he appear back in court today. (Ayanna Blair)