We discussed this in assamnet, to the chagrin of some of our more
desi friends :-).
cm
Afzal mercy campaign gathers steam abroad
29 Jun, 2007 l 0241 hrs ISTlTIMES NEWS NETWORK
LONDON: The overseas campaign to secure mercy for Afzal Guru, turned
the heat up a notch with 40 British parliamentarians, human rights
lawyers and civil liberty activists attending a House of Commons
meeting to decry the alleged "miscarriage of justice".
The meeting on Wednesday night, which comes 10 weeks after Guru's
cause was first championed here, urged Britain's new prime minister
Gordon Brown, "who has spoken out against the death penalty - to
intervene in the Afzal Guru case and write to A P J Abdul Kalam
asking him to grant Afzal a reprieve".
John McDonnell, a left-wing MP of the governing Labour Party, chaired
the meeting and spoke of his experience of cases of miscarriage of
justice. He said, cases of miscarriage of justice follow a typical
pattern "where an outrageous violent incident is followed by a moral
panic, where those arrested have poor legal representation or none at
all, where torture is involved and where the court case edges from an
abuse of the system to farce and pantomime and is followed by the
death penalty or a very long jail sentence.
But gradually information seeps out, a campaign builds up and that is
what is happening in Afzal's case".
South Asian activists and campaigners discussed a previous Early Day
Motion (EDM) moved by McDonnell, which was signed by 30 British MPs
and urged President Kalam to grant Guru a reprieve and call an
inquiry into his conviction.
In a significant step-change of pace for the newly-formed 'Campaign
to Save Afzal Guru', McDonnell declared "(we) must now raise the
profile of the case internationally we have started this and now have
the support of a large number of MPs - we will take a delegation from
among those who have signed the EDM to meet the foreign secretary and
ask him to take it up and we will seek an adjournment debate in the
House of Commons".
But in an intervention, considered politically delicate, Mirpuri peer
Lord Nazir Ahmed, who has long campaigned for "Kashmiri
independence", drew attention to alleged widely-documented human
rights abuses in Kashmir.
In yet another intervention described by some observers as
"India-bashing", Adnan Siddiqui of the 'Cage Prisoners, Guantanamo
campaign, spoke about India's role in the US "war on terror".
Speaking about conditions in Tihar jail, where Guru is incarcerated,
Amrit Wilson of the South Asia Solidarity Group said six prisoners
had died there since June 6 and the Red Cross had refused access to
Guru._______________________________________________
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