By News Americas Now Staff Writer

News Americas Now, NY, NY, Fri. Oct. 16, 2026: Guyana Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed and two other men were granted bail Friday in the sum of $250,000 on each charge, following a Georgetown Magistrates’ Court hearing that saw his defense team accuse police of fabricating evidence and targeting him as part of a “calculated attempt” to eliminate him politically.

Mohamed, his driver Eugene Thorne, and his videographer Mario Mohamed appeared before Principal Magistrate Faith McGusty and were jointly charged with possession of a firearm without a licence and possession of ammunition without a licence. A third charge, attempting to obstruct the course of justice, was laid indictably, and the defendants were not required to enter a plea.

THE CHARGES

The charges stem from an incident earlier in the week outside the Kitty residence of Senior Superintendent Prem Narine, head of the Guyana Police Force’s Special Branch. Narine has said he heard what sounded like gunfire before discharging several rounds from his own service weapon toward a vehicle carrying Mohamed and his associates.

Attorney-at-Law Siand Dhurjon, representing Mohamed, mounted a forceful challenge to the prosecution’s case. He argued that Mohamed was performing his duties as Leader of the Opposition at the time, noted the vehicle was not tinted, and questioned why officers would have been unable to identify him. Dhurjon also raised concerns about the handling of the vehicle — which he said was driven to the police station by a Special Branch rank — the seizure of the defendants’ cellphones, and the absence of any CCTV footage of the incident despite its seriousness. In his most pointed submission, Dhurjon alleged the episode formed part of a calculated attempt to eliminate the Opposition Leader, and questioned how three men could allegedly have discharged a single firearm between them.

Attorney-at-Law Damion DaSilva, representing Thorne, raised similar arguments about the missing video evidence. Senior Counsel Roysdale Forde, representing Mario Mohamed, described the prosecution’s objections to bail as reckless and argued the Opposition Leader’s associates were being treated as “collateral damage” in a wider political confrontation, with state power being used to target Mohamed.

THE PROSECUTION

The prosecution maintained there was no direct evidence establishing who had actually discharged the firearm.

In granting bail, Magistrate McGusty took note of the disputed circumstances surrounding the alleged discovery of the firearm, including references to a second search of the vehicle, and highlighted the absence, so far, of CCTV footage.

Bail was granted subject to strict conditions: all three men must surrender their passports, refrain from contacting prosecution witnesses — particularly Narine and his immediate family — and stay away from Narine’s Barr Street residence. They must also notify the court of any change of address and obtain court permission before traveling. The matter was adjourned to November 6.

The case is separate from Mohamed’s ongoing fight against a U.S. extradition request, on which Guyana’s Court of Appeal has reserved its ruling on a related constitutional challenge to the Fugitive Offenders Act.

This is a developing story.

By News Americas Now Staff Writer

News Americas Now, NY, NY, Fri. Oct. 16, 2026: A viral TMZ report claiming Sean “Diddy” Combs suffered a head injury in a prison fight with Jamaican former “don” Christopher Michael Dudus Coke is now being denied by nearly everyone with direct knowledge of it as simply Fake News. The Federal Bureau of Prisons told the Daily Mail flatly that “the story you are referring to is false and did not happen.” Combs’s family has disputed the account. And Coke’s aunt, Angela Jackson, said on Instagram that the report is “completely false and nothing more than fake news,” adding that her nephew has never even met Combs and that the two men are held in separate sections of Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution.

What hasn’t been denied, and what the original report got right regardless of whether the fight itself happened, is that Combs is still being held at Fort Dix and that an NBC News report on his lifestyle behind bars did trigger prison raids and phone confiscations. Beyond that, the Bureau of Prisons has declined to discuss any inmate’s confinement in detail, citing privacy and security, so Combs’s reported head injury remains unverified.

But the story went viral for a reason, and on Caribbean social media this week it wasn’t really about Diddy at all – it was about Dudus. Whether or not the two men ever crossed paths, the fact that so many people instantly believed a Jamaican “don” serving a federal sentence could still be the most feared man in an American prison says something about who Christopher Coke actually is to the Caribbean diaspora, even sixteen years after he left Jamaica in handcuffs.

DUDUS COKE

Coke’s name brought Jamaica to a standstill in May 2010. As the Tivoli Gardens “area don” with alleged ties to drug and gun trafficking through his Shower Posse network, Coke was wanted on a U.S. extradition request that the Jamaican government sat on for months — a delay that triggered a political crisis, cost a justice minister his job, and badly damaged a prime minister’s credibility. When security forces finally moved into the Tivoli Gardens community in West Kingston to extract him, the operation became one of the deadliest in the island’s modern history: a state of emergency, gun battles in the streets, and a civilian death toll that human rights investigators and community advocates have put anywhere from the 40s into the dozens beyond that, with many residents insisting the real number is higher than what was ever officially confirmed. A full, independent accounting of what happened in Tivoli Gardens that week has still never been delivered to the families who lost people.

Coke evaded capture for weeks afterward before he was caught trying to flee the island and was extradited to the U.S., where he pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced in 2012 to 23 years.

Sixteen years later, a false story about him was still believable enough to go viral worldwide within hours – proof that Coke’s name still carries real weight, for better or worse, long after he left Jamaican streets. Whatever actually happened or didn’t happen at Fort Dix this week, that’s the part of this story the diaspora already understood, and the part most American outlets chasing the Diddy angle never will: the families of Tivoli Gardens are still waiting on accountability for what that 2010 operation cost them, while the man at the center of it remains, even from behind bars, one of the most talked-about figures to ever come out of Jamaica. He is scheduled to be released on January 28, 2029, and likely will be deported back to Jamaica.

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