Who is Afzal Guru?
Afzal Guru is a Kashmiri, facing a death sentence, currently detained in India’s notorious Tihar jail.
He is accused of involvement in the attack on the Indian Parliament five years ago. He faces hanging although:
· there is no direct evidence against him and he is known not to have injured or harmed anyone,
· the Courts have found that the investigating agencies deliberately fabricated evidence and forged documents against him and others accused, and
· he was denied an opportunity to defend himself – he did not even have a lawyer. Afzal was due to be hanged on October 20, 2006, however, a stay on his execution was obtained through a mercy petition to the Indian President. He is still waiting to hear whether the President will intervene to save his life.

Background
Afzal is from a family of modest means in Srinagar. He had hoped to study and become a doctor. In the early 1990s, when a large numbers of Kashmiri youth were attracted to the movement for independence, Afzal joined the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). After three months, disillusioned by the infighting, he left the movement. During these three months, he neither received any training nor took part in any activities. After he left the JKLF, he registered as a surrendered militant with the Indian security forces. The life of a surrendered militant in theKashmir valley is extremely hard. He faced harassment and continuous pressure to act as an informer for the security forces. They would periodically detain and torture him, to force him to work for them. In addition, his family faced continuous threats and extortion. In one incident he was incarcerated and severely tortured by the Special Task Force for 25 days. He was told that his family members would be killed (the officer who tortured him has since boasted on television about what he did to Afzal). After this episode of unbearable pressure, Afzal agreed to work for the security forces. He was only released after his family paid a huge bribe, which left them completely impoverished. In the second week of December, Afzal was asked by the security forces to do ‘a small job’ – to take a man called Mohamed to Delhi and find him a room to live in. Afzal did this.

The Attack on the Indian parliament
On December 13, 2001 the Indian parliament was attacked. Five of the attackers were killed by the security forces – a sixth who was seen on television was never mentioned in police reports. One of the five men killed was Mohamed. The full identity of Mohamed or any of the others has yet been established. Three other men, who according to the police were responsible for masterminding the attack on the parliament, have also not yet been found. In the next two days, the investigating agencies together with a “special cell” of the Delhi Police, detained four persons, all Kashmiri, and charged them with the offence of conspiring to attack the Parliament under India’s notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). One of those arrested was Afzal.
After a nationwide campaign for a fair trial, two of the detainees, Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani and Navjot Sandhu (who was jailed along with her newborn baby), were acquitted of all charges. A third, the husband of Navjot Sandhu, had his death sentence converted to a ten years prison sentence. However, Afzal was sentenced to death.

Abu Ghraib style torture and media collusion
After he was arrested Afzal was taken to the “special cell” of the Delhi police. There he was kept naked and beaten ruthlessly for two days – once by a man who later appeared as a prosecution witness; police officers urinated in his mouth saying ‘this is the way you can break your roza(fast)’. After he was tortured he was handcuffed and made to sit on a chair and forced to ‘confess’ at a media conference. Television broadcasts of these confessions, however, did not show the handcuffs nor the men who tortured and humiliated him. On 15th and 16th December 2006 – five years following the attack on the Indian Parliament, New Delhi Television (NDTV) re-ran the ‘confession’ several times although they had been informed that by now that the Supreme Court of India had rejected it and the High Court had reprimanded the police for it. The programme was accompanied by remarks from presenters, such as “…see how natural, how truthful, how fluent his statement appears” and “…who can believe such a statement can be given under torture”. NDTV then went further by inviting viewers to SMS phone text messages as to whether Afzal should be hanged following the broadcast of his confession – literally asking viewers to act as a virtual lynch mob.

Afzal’s trial
Afzal’s trial was a mockery of justice. He was denied the opportunity to defend himself – he did not even have a lawyer. Despite this, the courts found that the investigating agencies deliberately fabricated evidence and forged documents. It also concluded that he was not involved in the actual attack on the Indian parliament and that he did not kill or injure anybody. In fact, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that there was no direct, and only circumstantial, evidence against him. Despite this Afzal was sentenced to death. The court claimed “…the collective conscience of the society will be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender…. the appellant, who is a surrendered militant ….. is a menace to society and should become extinct.”

Mercy Petition filed for the President of India to intervene
The President can exercise his constitutional power in the matter of Afzal Guru and grant him a reprieve. A mercy petition has been filed before the President of India to intervene and grant Afzal a reprieve.

The political context
The case of Afzal Guru throws into relief the nature of India’s democracy today, Afzal, from a poor family, a Muslim, and a Kashmiri, represents all those who are most actively persecuted by agencies such as the Police, the Intelligence Agencies and the Armed forces. The reprehensible sentence he faces clearly exposes the judiciary’s inability to check these arms of the Indian state operating with total impunity.

More significantly the rise of Hindu chauvinist forces in the last decade or so has provided the climate in which the Indian government and the state has willingly embraced the rhetoric and methodology of the ‘war on terror’ propagated by the USA. Afzal in his battle for a reprieve has to counter these very powerful and sinister developments, much like the inmates ofGuantanamo.
The charges against Afzal and others accused in the Parliament attack cases were the first under India’s notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). POTA, was eventually repealed by the Indian government in September 2004, after a nationwide campaign, on the grounds that it had been misused and falls considerably short of international fair trial standards.

Almost all aspects of POTA have, however, been incorporated into a different law - the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. Whereas maximum sentences handed out under this Act had been 7 years, and most sentences ranged between one and three years, after the repeal of POTA, most sentences under it are increased to life imprisonment or death. Only the use of ‘confessions’ before a police officer acceptable under POTA has not been incorporated in to the Unlawful Activities(Prevention) Act.

As India becomes an increasingly authoritarian country, democratic spaces are being closed down and in many Indian states – Kashmir, Manipur and elsewhere, India’s army, the third largest in the world, and a plethora of paramilitary groups are routinely being used against its own citizens.

India is also playing a significant regional and global policing role in the US-led war on terror. It has secret prisons outside the country (see Framing Geelani Hanging Afzal –Patriotism in the time of terror’ by Nandita Haksar, Bibliophile South Asia 2007) and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was able to assure President Bush in 2005 that the Indian government was eager to ‘rebuild’ Iraq, police ‘trouble spots’ in Asia, defeat ‘religious extremism’ and ‘spread democracy world wide’. More recently a US Defence Department paper notes that the US needs access to Indian bases and as a first step, the Indian and US navy are to conduct joint exercises ‘out of sight’ to avoid the gaze of Indian public opinion which is ‘quick to see colonialism through the back door’.

Setting up the campaign for justice for Afzal Guru in the UK
The campaign for justice for Afzal Guru in the UK started in January 2007 with a protest outside the Indian High Commission in Britain on India’s Republic Day, 26 January, organised by South Asia Solidarity Group and a letter to the Indian President Dr Abdul Kalam asking him to use his constitutional powers to grant a reprieve to Afzal signed by six British-based South Asian organisations and two Members of the British Parliament – Jeremy Corbyn and Roger Godsiff. This was followed by a public meeting Torture, lies and show trials –
India’s ‘war on terror’ organised once again by South Asia Solidarity Group and supported by Campaign against Criminalisation of Communities (CAMPACC) on 12 April. The meeting led to the setting up of a committee to organise the Save Afzal Guru Campaign in the UK ( and this website) by a number of individuals and groups including Cage Prisoners, CAMPACC, the Islamic Human Rights Commission, South Asia Solidarity Group and the 1857 Committee.