19 December, 2002

Kashmir anger over death sentences

Shaukat Hussain's family are distraught

Protests have erupted in Indian-administered Kashmir over death sentences handed down to three Kashmiris for an attack on India's parliament a year ago.

Separatist leaders, lawyers and ordinary Kashmiris condemned the sentences, after a Delhi court found the men guilty of helping militants plan and carry out the attack which killed 14 people.

Shops and businesses are shut across Indian-administered Kashmir in response to a strike called by lawyers and separatist groups.

 Mohammed Afzal, a 35-year-old fruit merchant, Shaukat Hussain and SAR Geelani, a Delhi college teacher, were convicted on Wednesday on charges of waging war on the state and conspiracy to murder.

 A fourth person, Navjot or Afsan Guru who is the wife of Hussain, was found guilty of "withholding information" from police and received five years imprisonment.

 Lawyers for the four say they will appeal against the sentence and the conviction.

 Protests

 In Baramullah, the home town of Geelani, hundreds of people marched through snow-bound streets in protest on Thursday.

 The men plan to appeal

 They chanted slogans against the court verdict and demanded that all four be released.

 In the state's summer capital Srinagar, police arrested separatist leader Javed Ahmed Mir of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and some others before they could organise a demonstration.

 Police say Afzal and Hussain are members of the Pakistan-backed militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, fighting in Indian-administered Kashmir.

 The leading separatist alliance, the Hurriyat Conference, accused the Indian Government of "stage-managing" the parliament attack "to take advantage fo the international outcry against terror following the 11 September attacks in the United States".

 "If the attack on parliament and other such related incidents are probed it would be proved beyond doubt that they were carried out with an aim to malign and weaken our freedom struggle," the Hurriyat said.

 Appeal

 Lawyers for three of those convicted plan to approach a higher court to turn down the sentence as well as the conviction.

 "We will go through the judgement and order on sentence and appeal in the High Court," Geelani's counsel Seema Gulati said.

 "There is no question of not going for an appeal. Death penalty was not called for," said Nitya Ramakrishnan, counsel for Hussain and his wife.

 The death sentence must be ratified by a higher court under Indian law.

 Attack plot

 Delivering sentence, Judge SN Dhingra said the accused had been inspired by al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden.

 "They are enemies of mankind. They deserve no leniency," he said.

 Death by hanging is rare in India, and tends to be applied in particularly high-profile cases.

 Wednesday's sentence is the first death penalty handed out under a recently-enacted anti-terrorism law.

 Nine people were shot dead when five armed gunmen entered the grounds of parliament in Delhi in December last year.

 All five attackers were shot dead by police.

 Relations between India and Pakistan deteriorated after the attack, as they mobilised up to a million men along their common border, leading to international concern about a possible war.