On November 2, 2026, a volatile series of confrontations unfolded outside Georgetown’s Magistrates’ Court in Guyana, shortly after Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed exited a scheduled court hearing, triggering a heavy police response against assembled supporters from the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) movement. Equipped with riot shields and batons, uniformed law enforcement personnel moved to disperse the crowd, which had earlier breached metal police barriers at the intersection of Brickdam and Avenue of the Republic, surging past lineups of both male and female officers to push toward the courthouse entrance. As the crowd advanced, police deployed live warning shots and tear gas canisters, with multiple officers observed retreating temporarily from the surge as their colleagues discharged the crowd control munitions. The group of fewer than 200 demonstrators later gathered at nearby Stabroek Market Square, directly across from a permanent police outpost, where they ignited a large pile of collected rubbish; responding officers quickly deployed fire extinguishers to douse the blaze before it could spread to adjacent market stalls. Prior to the major crowd surge, multiple unordered shots were fired from the vicinity of the protest, and demonstrators threw glass bottles at the line of officers stationed to secure the courthouse perimeter. Prominent political figures who arrived to show solidarity with WIN and Mohamed issued stark warnings to the governing administration to de-escalate tensions immediately. Amanza Walton-Desir, leader of the Forward Guyana Movement (FGM), drew attention to the recent unexplained death of a detainee in police custody, cautioning that any harm to Mohamed while he is held at Lusignan Prison would ignite widespread, unprecedented anger across the nation. “We already have a documented case of a man dying in state custody, and now the official Leader of the Opposition is behind bars. If anything happens to him while he is incarcerated, this country will face catastrophic unrest – my urgent call to the government is to step back from this confrontational path and de-escalate immediately,” Walton-Desir stated. A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) parliamentarian Sherod Duncan echoed these concerns, arguing that the treatment of Mohamed sets a dangerous legal precedent that threatens all political actors and ordinary Guyanese citizens. “The persecution the Opposition Leader is facing today will not stop at his door. This can become the standard treatment for any political party, any elected leader, and every regular citizen of this country. We are watching deeply harmful, anti-democratic precedents being written in real time,” Duncan remarked. Walton-Desir also raised sharp legal objections to reports that Mohamed is being held in solitary confinement, noting that the charges against him are bailable offences that do not justify such restrictive, punitive detention conditions. She argued that the current administration is weaponizing both the national legal system and penal infrastructure to target, harass, and break political opponents. Upon his arrival at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court the previous day, Mohamed himself described the conditions of his detention at Lusignan Prison as deliberate “maximum punishment,” claiming he was locked in his sweltering, unventilated cell for 23 hours and 50 minutes each day. “This demonic PPP government is trying to kill me before the next national election. My cell is like a furnace, there is no relief, no access to basic amenities – this is not detention, this is state-sponsored torture,” Mohamed told assembled reporters. In a parallel development unrelated to the protest unrest, Guyana Police Force intelligence chief Prem Narine, a key witness in ongoing high-stakes extradition request hearings, repeated his earlier sworn testimony to the court that he faces credible, imminent threats to his personal safety and that of his immediate family. “I am genuinely fearful for my life. My family is being dragged into these proceedings against their will – my brother has been targeted repeatedly, and his small business has been subjected to targeted harassment and attacks that have left him on the brink of financial ruin,” Narine confirmed during his latest court appearance. The incident was updated for public release by Demerara Waves journalist Denis Chabrol on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, at 6:19 local time.