No fair trial: Govt to take Afzal Guru’s execution to Hague court

Indian govt executed the freedom fighter on Feb 9 2013 for allegedly masterminding attack on Indian Parliament in 2001

ISLAMABAD:

Ministry of Kashmir Affairs has asked the Foreign Office to take the execution of Kashmiri freedom fighter Afzal Guru to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the ground that he was not given a fair trial.

“I have formally asked the foreign affairs ministry to complete all the formalities to take up the execution of Afzal Guru to the international court of Justice, seeking a justice for the Kashmiri freedom fighter even after his death,” said Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Barjis Tahir.

Indian government executed Afzal Guru in the Tihar Jail in New Delhi on February 9 2013 for allegedly masterminding the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001. The execution had sparked criticism and raised many questions from across the world over the fair trial by the Indian authorities.

Indian authorities arrested Guru in 2001 and claimed that he was involved in planning the attack on the Indian Parliament back in a 2001 that left 14 people dead.



He said the Indian courts convicted and subsequently hanged him without having ample evidence of his involvement in the attack on parliament and even his body was not handed over to his family.

Earlier, on the occasion of Kashmir Solidarity Day on February 5, 2014, Barjis Tahir at a TV talk show had pledged to take the case of Guru to the International Court of Justice.

The step was taken after the revelation of the brutalities committed by the Indian security forces on Guru in the Jail and it was revealed in a book of an Indian author Arundhati Roy, who referred to some Indian investigators, who confessed on committing serious atrocities on the freedom fighter.

Roy mentioned of an investigator and deputy superintendent of Indian police, who admitted of torturing Guru by burning his body and electrocuting him after filling his stomach with petrol.

She further quoted the DSP that despite subjecting Guru with worse atrocities, they failed to make him confess the crime.

Guru had been on death row since first being convicted in 2002. Subsequent appeals in higher courts were also rejected, and India’s Supreme Court set an October 2006 date for execution. But his execution was delayed after his wife filed a mercy petition with India’s president.

That petition, the last step in the judicial process, was turned down in the first week of February 2013 and he was executed on February 9, 2013.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2014.