JUSTICE Brassington Reynolds, on Tuesday, sentenced Mohamed Wadikar Ali to seven years imprisonment after he breached a protection order and a twelve months bond, imposed by a lower court, and attempted to kill his wife, Ann Singh nicknamed ‘Snowie’.

The jail sentence was imposed on the prisoner after a mixed Berbice Assizes jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict against him for the murder attempt.
Singh, in her evidence, testified about instances of physical and verbal abuse by the convict who fathered two of her three children.
The woman said, on March 31, 2009, she was returning to her Bush Lot home from her place of employment, R.A. Soda Factory at Rosignol, also at West Coast Berbice, when she observed that Ali was following her in the minibus.
She said she reported, to a policewoman, that she was being molested by Ali, whom she had left three months ago, but he told the officer that she was his wife and, when she disembarked the bus, at Bush Lot and was walking along the secondary school dam, she noticed that he had followed her.
She said she was about to turn into her street when, with the aid of the school light, she saw him running towards her and she called out to another woman, in front of whose house she was, but did not get a response.
Singh said, by then, Ali reached and grabbed her. He hit her and she fell to the ground and could not get up although she tried.
She recalled that, while being taken to Fort Wellington Hospital, the driver of the minibus which transported her, stopped in the vicinity of Middle Dam, where Ali was standing with Rural Constable Looknauth Sukhai who escorted him to the Fort Wellington Station.
Singh said she had pointed out Ali as the person who injured her, prior to being conveyed to Fort Wellington Hospital and, subsequently, Georgetown Public Hospital, where she was a patient for three days.
However, she remembered that, after being discharged, she had to return daily for three weeks for dressing.
Meanwhile, in his report, Senior Probation Officer, Floyd Rudder said Ali is a school dropout and a habitual abuser of alcohol who had shown utmost disregard for law and order.
This, the officer observed, was due to his subsequent reappearances before a court of law even while a protection order against him was in effect.
“In fact, the accused could not have accepted the virtual complainant’s decision not to reconcile with him, premised on the violence perpetrated against her and his actions towards her on the day in question could have been fatal.

Corresponding penalty
“It is believed that persons should not be allowed to breach the law and such callous behaviour should be greeted with corresponding penalty,” Rudder recommended.
Rudder told the court that Ali left Rosignol Secondary School in fourth form without any concern from his older siblings, since his parents had migrated to Canada when he was 14 years old.
Subsequently, two years later, he started a clothes vending business with the assistance of other siblings and, for three years, was a suitcase trader whose travels took him to Barbados, from where he purchased merchandise for retail sales locally.
In 1996, he migrated to Canada where he learnt to spray paint vehicles but as he was an illegal immigrant for eight years, the immigration authority, eventually, found and deemed him persona non grata. Still, he was given an opportunity to correct his landed residential status but, because the process was prolonged and tedious, it frustrated him and he returned to Guyana on his own volition in 2004.
The compilation said, shortly after his return, he established a common law union with the virtual complainant for three and a half years, during which time they produced  two children, now aged five and six years.
Initially, the relationship was good but various domestic problems arose after Ali would imbibe alcohol, especially after the birth of the first child.
The man’s negative pattern of behaviour caused the virtual complainant to leave him on three different occasions, but she, nevertheless, reconciled with him twice.
Subsequently, Ali sought the intervention of the Probation and Social Services Department in 2009, towards reconciliation but it did not occur due to the constant abuse.
Ali would stalk and abuse Singh at her place of employment and at the Bush Lot home of her aged mother.
Defence counsel, Sasha Roberts said Ali has expressed remorse, admitted his mistakes and pleaded for leniency.
Addressing the convict, Justice Reynolds told him: “I have considered the probation report which was given at short notice.
“I have listened to the mitigation and am happy to hear that you have expressed remorse and have apologised to your wife for your conduct. I am happy that you are determined to benefit from counseling. It really strikes me that, during your unsupervised formative years, you managed to build yourself into an industrious and enterprising young man.
“You seem to succumb to the vice of alcohol. You have a serious insecurity issue which has been exacerbated by your alcoholic abuse. In the best interest of all concerned, you shall be kept in a controlled environment in which you will have access to professional counseling. I have considered your age, a month shy of your fortieth birthday. This could have been a lot worse for you. If the circumstances were different, you would have been sentenced to hanging. I sentence you to seven years imprisonment.”