COMMISSIONER of the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) and newspaper columnist Barrington Braithwaite has lodged a complaint with the police after he was allegedly threatened by former murder accused and PPP member, Jason Abdulla.

Braithwaite told the Guyana Chronicle that on Monday morning around 11:30hrs, he was walking along Robb Street, running his own errands when he passed a group of people in the vicinity of Freedom House.

He identified Abdulla, whom he said he recognised from his photographs being in the newspapers. “When I passed, nobody said anything, and I said nothing. But then I heard him (Abdulla) telling, pointing and telling people, ‘that’s he. He’s Barrington Braithwaite. So I turned and I said if you want to introduce me to somebody, you could stop me and introduce me, you ain’t really gotta point me out to people,” Braithwaite said.

His remarks somehow annoyed Abdulla, as Braithwaite said he (Abdulla) responded in quite a hostile manner. “He threw his hands in the air and started shouting ‘You can’t bluff me. Allyuh can’t do me nothing’ and he was walking towards me and so I proceeded towards him and he paused. I said ‘Who Is allyuh?’ And he said ‘you can’t bluff me’; he also said some other things that were incoherent,” Braithwaite recalled.

Concluding that the approach of Abdulla was threatening and uncalled for, Braithwaite said he made a stop at Brickdam Police Station and in the presence of a police rank, he made an official report of a threat.

“I don’t know where this is coming from- I write letters… I actually made some comments on a letter that seemed to become very popular in Sunday Chronicle, about the nature of the people who were the entourage of Charrandass. I have no idea if it came from this guy, or if he just felt that he gonna just show them some kind of macho…”

Braithwaite said he viewed Abdulla’s actions as a threat “because as I told the police, if this man approaches me again, I will assume that he is coming to do me harm and I will defend myself accordingly,” Braithwaite expressed.

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Abdulla was in 2017 sentenced to six months imprisonment for attacking newspaper columnist Freddie Kissoon. In fact, it was he and his two cohorts, former government information liaison officer, Kwame McCoy and death squad member, Sean Hinds, who were accused of throwing faeces on the columnist.