Dr Bari says Suriname court has ordered release of his property
Stabroek News
May 13, 2002
Local physician and surgeon, Dr Abubakar Bari, has received a copy of a court order releasing his personal belongings which were confiscated by the Suriname military police after he was detained in the neighbouring country recently. On Tuesday his lawyers are due to appear in a Surinamese court on his behalf when it is expected that his personal belongings would be released.
Dr Bari was held by the Surinamese military police on April 23 in Paramaribo while in transit to China via Holland. He was incarcerated for over a week on claims that he was a member of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network al Qaeda before he was released into the custody of the local police on May 1.
Dr Bari on Saturday told Stabroek News that his lawyers, I D Kanhai and Franklen Truideman, have obtained the court order which states that for every day his belongings were held that he be paid a certain sum.
A court order of April 29 had instructed that he be given back his property and allowed to continue on his travel to China via Holland. Instead of obeying the court order, the Surinamese military police had turned over Dr Bari and another Guyanese who was also held at the same time to the Guyana Police Force on May 1.
Dr Bari said the Surinamese military police had told him that they were turning them over to the local police based on instructions from the Guyana Government.
He obtained a copy of the court order, written in Dutch on Saturday.
When his lawyers appear in court tomorrow, it is expected that they will collect the sum of US$12,700, which he said he should have used to buy a chemical analyser for his clinic and Chinese acupuncture equipment; diamond samples weighing a quarter of a carat in total, five of his gold rings and five others which were gifts; two brown gems and a national identification card.
Dr Bari said that he has given his lawyers the power-of-attorney to file a case against the military police for contempt of court in failing to obey a court order granted by a judge to release him and to allow him to continue on his journey to China to conduct his business. Instead, he was released into the custody of the Guyana police who subsequently released him on $20,000 bail pending investigations.
Dr Bari told Stabroek News that his identity had been questioned by the Surinamese authority and this led to them accusing him of being a member of the al Qaeda network.
He said that because of the damage the publicity given to his incarceration in Suriname has done to his reputation, he was considering suing those in the Surinamese media who contributed to the defamation. He said that since the publicity, he had been contacted by the international press as well as his friends and colleagues who read of his incarceration, in other foreign languages, on the internet. (Miranda La Rose)