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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Wait for foreign inputs on Afroze to end |
| 2004-05-17 |
| For the past two years, the Mumbai police have been waiting for information on suspected al-Qaeda terrorist Mohammed Afroze from the US, UK and Australia. The wait seems to have been futile and on Wednesday, Judge A P Bhangale of the special Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) court will frame charges against Afroze and his brother Farooq without the information from abroad. Special public prosecutor Ujwal Nikam, who is appearing in the Afroze case, told the POTA court recently that the investigation would be incomplete till they received information from the USA, UK and Australia. Only the Australian authorities responded to the request, saying they wanted an undertaking that the concerned person would not be given capital punishment. The special POTA court in 2002 had issued the letters rogatory to three countries on the request made by the Mumbai police. A letter rogatory is a communication sent by the court, in which a case is pending, to a foreign court requesting information from its (the foreign courtâs) jurisdiction. Reacting to the prosecutionâs claims that the investigation was incomplete without the inputs from overseas, Afrozeâs lawyer, Mubin Solkar, said, âThis is just a delaying tactic. It is true that after filing a charge sheet in the case, the prosecution got court permission to investigate further. However, the court had also asked them to file a fortnightly report on the investigation. The prosecution has never filed those reports.â |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 I hope they didn't phrase the requests in such formal language that a spambot thought it was a #404 (Nigerian seeks help to recover wealth) |
| Posted by: 3dc 2004-05-17 1:52:50 PM |