GUYANA-Opposition legislator freed of cybercrime charge.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – An opposition legislator has been freed of a criminal Cybercrime charge based on a complaint by the now Chief-of-Staff of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), Brigadier Omar Khan, according to a lawyer.

Attorney Lyndon Amsterdam said Senior Magistrate Leron Daly dismissed the charge that had been laid against Annette Ferguson of the main opposition, A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC), on June 21, 2021.
Annette Ferguson (File Photo)

He had previously overruled no-case submissions and had called on Ferguson to lead a defense.

According to the lawyer, the court found that while the opposition legislator made the post, the prosecution failed to prove that she knew the post was false.

During the trial that lasted for more than two years, the court heard that she allegedly re-posted a statement that had first been posted on the social page of another person.

The attorney said that if she was found guilty, the opposition legislator could have been fined up to five million dollars (One Guyana dollar=US$0.004 cents) and imprisoned for three years.

Amsterdam said submissions contended that the prosecution had failed to prove the case against the former government minister at the required standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

The lawyer had highlighted that the section of the Cybercrime Act under which the police had laid the charge did not establish an offense, so the court need not consider the evidence but should dismiss the charge.

In her ruling on Thursday, Magistrate Daly agreed that the section under which Ferguson was charged did not establish an offense and invited the prosecutor to amend the charge to another section of the Act, and this was done.

Magistrate Daly then analyzed the evidence and found that the prosecution had to prove five section elements.

Khan, who was then a GDF Colonel, had filed a complaint with the police that he had seen a post made by Ferguson on Facebook.

The lawyer said Khan traced the post on Annette Ferguson’s Facebook page and lodged a complaint with the police that the post had caused him embarrassment and humiliation.

The police, after interviewing Ferguson, charged her under the Cybercrime Act on June 21, 2021.