However, he chose the three months in jail, as his vending money was not enough to pay the fine.

He served his time at the Frederick Street Prison, Port of Spain.

The father of two girls, ages five and three, said since he is a Muslim, he decided to fast for two days each week while being incarcerated.

He revealed: “It was dinner time in jail and I had been fasting all day.

“They were serving hot tea with bread that day and I didn’t feel to eat the bread.

“I went across to the ration room officer and asked him if I could take the tea only and return to my cell, and he told me yes.

“The ration room was packed with inmates when I proceeded to the front of the tea line, took up a cup and put it for the prisoner to pour me the tea.

“As I was about to get the tea, a prisons officer approached me and asked me if I didn’t see it had a line.

“Before I could answer him, he hit me a baton on my neck.”

Ali continued: “I explained to him that the ration room officer gave me permission to take tea only and go back to my cell room.”

Ali rubbed his now deformed hand as he recalled what happened next: “The officer ignored my explanation and proceeded to severely beat me, hitting me several more blows, this time to my upper body.

“The man beat me like I was a dog or something.

“It was licks for so.

“I began to brakes the blows with my right hand.

“After a while, both the officer and I noticed that my hand had fallen out of place, but he still hit me some extra blows before he stopped and sent me to my cell room.”

Ali said despite the extreme pain he was in and his tearful pleas, the prisons authorities still wickedly refused to send him to the Port of Spain General Hospital (POSGH) for treatment.

The frail-bodied man pointed out that it was not until two weeks after the beating that he was finally sent to the hospital.

He said he survived on painkillers from the prison’s dispensary for the two weeks prior to being sent to POSGH.

“Despite my break hand and the extreme pain, I was still forced to do all my jail duties like toting things etc. during the period,” Ali explained.

“Then they finally allowed me to put down my name to see the prisons doctor and it was he who recommended that I must go to the hospital.”

Ali said when he arrived at the hospital he was told that his broken hand had already begun to heal.

However, because of the length of time it took him to see that doctor, the broken bones were terribly out of place.

His hand now has a massive swelling as a result.

The doctor told him that if he wanted the hospital to correct the problem, they would have to break his hand again and perform surgery on it.

Ali refused the hospital’s offer and went back to prison with his hand in the same deformed condition.

He was released from jail on August 6, and was forced to join the unemployment line.

He added: “I want to press charges against the prisons officer who did this to me, because I know his name, and also the authorities.

“However, the prisons people told me that in order to do that I would have to wait on a paper from them.

“Somehow, though, I feel they are fooling me.

“I wish a lawyer will help me out, because what they did to me was pure wickedness.”

The concerned father said that vending was his only means of income, which took care of his family.

But Ali said he is too afraid of being sent to jail again, to go back onto the streets and vend.

His children have not returned to school because he does not have enough money to send them.

“My three-year-old daughter is in pre-school, and the five-year-old is in primary school, but they can’t go these days,” he stated.

Ever since his release from prison, Ali, his common-law wife and their children have been surviving on a monthly grocery handout from their mosque and small tips from friendly strangers.

They all live in one room.

“I have been looking for work, any kind of job that I can get, but my ‘funny hand’ usually makes me lose out on job opportunities,” he said.

“I went to work by a woman, but when she gave me something to lift up I dropped it because of my hand and she immediately fired me.

“I really need help, any kind of help.”

He added: “We are currently in the month of Ramadhan where Muslims usually fast from 6 a.m. till 6 p.m., but I never know where the next meal is coming from to put on my family’s table to break the fast with,” he ended.

Prisons Commissioner John Rougier remained unavailable for a comment about Ali’s claims of brutality up to Press time.