New Delhi: The Clooney Foundation for Justice will monitor the trial of award-winning Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan who has been detained in Kashmir for over two and a half years and faces the death penalty if convicted.
The TrialWatch initiative of the Foundation monitors criminal proceedings around the world, grades their fairness, and advocates for individuals who are unfairly detained.
Human rights lawyer and the Foundation’s co-founder Amal Clooney had represented Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, in 2018. They had been detained by the Myanmar government since December 2017 for reporting on the Rohingya genocide. They were released after spending 500 days behind bars in May 2019.
Sultan is a journalist who reported on human rights and political issues for the Kashmir Narrator. He has been imprisoned since his arrest in August 2018 and was only indicted five months later. He is now charged with supporting the terrorist group, Hizbul Mujahideen, and conspiring to kill a police officer. If convicted after trial, he faces the death penalty.
Press and human rights organisations believe the charges actually stem from Sultan’s reports on the killing of a Kashmiri militant by Indian security forces. The killing set off anti-government demonstrations in Kashmir in July 2016. The indictment cites Sultan’s social media posts and letter pads of the Hizbul Mujahideen at his home as evidence of his involvement with the banned group.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), after the group called for Sultan’s release in The Washington Post, the Jammu and Kashmir police responded on Twitter saying that Sultan was not being held for his work but for “hatching a criminal conspiracy, harbouring and supporting terrorists who martyred a police constable.”
Sultan’s trial is restarting after multiple delays by the state, including absences by key prosecution witnesses and the 2019 revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.
He is one of a number of journalists in Kashmir who appear to have been detained, investigated, or prosecuted in connection with their journalistic activities under counterterrorism and related laws.
Detained for over two and a half years in Kashmir Central Jail, where COVID-19 cases have been mounting since the summer of 2020, Sultan’s next bail hearing is scheduled for February 26, 2021.
International standards favour an accused’s liberty pending trial and proscribe mandatory pretrial detention based on the charged offence. In particular, these standards require individualised consideration of whether a restriction on liberty is necessary, and, if so, mandate that the least restrictive option be imposed.