Saurav,
Do you or does someone else know the exact charge and the evidence against this person called Geelani? I know he was arrested under POTA, a general umbrella. But in the court of law, I am sure, the specifics were brought out. The other three convicted at the same time apparently took part in supplying the explosives to the terrorists who stormed the Parliament.
Dilipda
Saurav Pathak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
geelani was convicted by the court today.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/comp/articleshow?artid=31460435
Chan Mahanta said on AssamNet:
+ The following is from the Sentinel:
+
+
+
+
+
+ A Flawed Justice System
+ Tavleen Singh
+
+ When human rights lawyer, Nandita Haksar, rang me to ask if I would write
+ something about the 'Geelani case' my first reaction was unsympathetic. Was
+ this the Geelani who was the son-in-law of the Kashmiri politician, I
+ asked, because then I was definitely not interested. Even if he were only a
+ journalist he would surely have known that the Jamaat-e-Islami his
+ father-in-law headed openly supported militant groups waging a violent
+ struggle to make Kashmir part of Pakistan. I must have got to about this
+ point in my sanctimonious tirade when she interrupted me t! o say she was
+ speaking of Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, who before his arrest in connection
+ with the December 13 terrorist attack on Parliament had been a professor at
+ Delhi University.
+
+ "I am as opposed to terrorism as anyone" she said "but this man has been
+ wrongly arrested and it will not help the fight against terrorism if this
+ kind of thing is allowed to happen". She then sent me a large bunch of
+ papers on the case, which include copies of appeals from Amnesty
+ International and Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
+ teachers as well as details of Geelani's arrest and trial. Reading through
+ them left me horrified and saddened and came as yet another reminder that
+ unless the evils of the criminal justice system in India are not removed
+ urgently we could one day soon see a total collapse of the rule of law.
+
+ The week of the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on Parliament -
+ ! what some call our 9/11 - is a good one to draw attention to the grave
+ injustice done to Mr Geelani and his family. On December 16, his case comes
+ up for judgement and his lawyers are hopeful that he will be acquitted but
+ what happened to him needs to be recounted, over and over again, to draw
+ attention to the kind of injustice that is being perpetrated in the name of
+ fighting terrorism.
+
+ Professor Geelani, who taught Arabic at Delhi University, was arrested a
+ day after the attack on Parliament. Why? Because as a Kashmiri his
+ telephone calls were being routinely tapped by the police and they
+ intercepted a conversation between him and his brother in Kashmir.
+
+ The police claim that during his conversation, the professor said something
+ that sounded like he was justifying the attack on Parliament. The
+ translation from Kashmiri to Hindi, on which they based this charge, was
+ done by an illiterate vegetable ! seller and when Geelani's lawyers had it
+ translated by two other people they found that the words yeh zaroori hota
+ hai that supposedly justified the attack did not exist on the tape
+ recording of the conversation. But, since the arrest was made under the
+ dreaded POTA the professor has spent his past year in Tihar Jail in a
+ maximum security cell. POTA does not allow for bail.
+
+ In Geelani's statement to the special court in which he is being tried,
+ this is what he says happened to him after his arrest. "On December 14,
+ 2001 after I was arrested I was blindfolded and taken to some place which
+ was like farmhouse. At that farm house tea was ordered by the police
+ officials and on the sugar sachles (sic) Ashoka Countryside was written. At
+ the farm house I was made naked and tortured and I was hanged upside down.
+ I was forced to make confessional statement but I made no confessional
+ statement as I was not involved.! Thereafter I was threatened if I made no
+ confessional statement, my family members would be eliminated. On 14th
+ night I was brought to special cell Lodhi Colony where I found my wife, my
+ two children, my brother, my brother-in-law and one another relative at the
+ special cell. They had already been arrested."
+
+ Despite eminent journalists, lawyers and writers - including Arundhati Roy
+ and Rajni Kothari - being part of the All India Defence Committee for Syed
+ Abdul Rehman Geelani, despite the appeals from Amnesty International, the
+ professor has remained in jail.
+
+ If Professor Geelani is acquitted next week he will, ironically, be
+ considered among the lucky ones who manage in their lifetime to get justice
+ from a system so deeply flawed that ten years after 200 people were killed
+ in the Mumbai bombings, justice has still not been done.
+
+ Last week, on the very day that Dawood Ibrahim's brother, Anees! , allegedly
+ one of those who masterminded the bombings, was arrested in Dubai, the
+ trial finally ended in a Mumbai special court. It began on June 30, 1995.
+ If this is how long it takes to bring terrorists to justice in India can we
+ even dare to claim that we have a working criminal justice system? When I
+ put this question to a Mumbai lawyer who supported last week's lawyers
+ strike against longer working hours he said, "The problem is not created by
+ us lawyers but by the fact that we have too few judges. If there were
+ enough judges then cases would not take so long to be concluded."
+
+ When looked at from the perspective of an outsider, though, it seems pretty
+ much as if everyone is to blame for the fact that to clear the backlog of
+ cases in Indian courts it is estimated that it would take more than 325
+ years. Most of all, though, the Government is to blame for never having
+ paid enough attention to rectifyin! g the wrongs in the system. When did you
+ last hear, for instance, of action being taken against police officers who
+ arrested and tortured an innocent man? When did you last hear of police
+ officers in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu being punished for their inability to
+ catch a murderous criminal like Veerappan? When did you last hear of a Law
+ Minister making a determined effort to rid us of the hundreds of obsolete
+ laws that clog the system? When did you last hear of action being taken
+ against government departments that contribute to the clogging by filing
+ pointless cases?
+
+ It is estimated that more than 70 per cent of civil cases in our courts
+ involve some government department or other as litigant. In most cases, the
+ matter could be settled out of court but in a criminal waste of taxpayers'
+ money and the nation's time, these cases languish in courtrooms across the
+ country. Is it any wonder then that even when ! terrorists are on trial the
+ case can take anything from ten to 20 years?
+
+ Things are so bad that even if we did manage to extradite Dawood Ibrahim's
+ brother for trial in an Indian court he could remain under trial and
+ unpunished for the rest of his life. It is important to remember, as I have
+ said before in this column, that two of the subcontinent's major terrorist
+ leaders Azhar Masood and Omar Sheikh were in Indian jails for five years
+ before being released in exchange for the passengers of IC 814.
+
+ Sheikh has since been convicted by a Pakistani court for the murder of
+ journalist, Daniel Pearl, and Masood is believed to be the mastermind of
+ the attack on Parliament. A justice system that punishes innocent people
+ and allows terrorists to remain 'under trial' is a justice system that is
+ sick. When are we going to get a Law Minister or a Chief Justice who
+ realizes that the malaise is now terminal?
+!
--
saurav
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