JUSTICE, INDIAN STYLE --- 'The notorious tag will stick with me' :Maulana Baksh, acquitted imam of Haj House, is upset over being branded a terrorist because of the claims of an LeT operative he knew only casually

JUSTICE, INDIAN STYLE

http://mumbaimirror.com/article/2/2010011820100118023100279b946ee2f/‘The-notorious-tag-will-stick-with-me-forever’.html

‘The notorious tag will stick with me forever’

Maulana Baksh, acquitted imam of Haj House, is upset over being branded a terrorist because of the claims of an LeT operative he knew only casually

By Anand Holla

Posted On Monday, January 18, 2010 at 02:31:00 AM

On Sunday, a day after Sewri Sessions Court acquitted him of terror charges, Maulana Ghulam Ilahi Yahya Baksh, 49, walked out of Arthur Road Jail, four years after his arrest in January 2006.  Maulana Ghulam Ilahi Yahya had been charged with harbouring terrorists in Haj House and financing terrorist activities Baksh said he knew Haji – one of three convicted Kashmiri ‘terrorists’ – and had many a time vented his ire at him in jail, for dragging his name into this case. On January 13, 2006, the ATS arrested Baksh based on interrogation of three alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists from Kashmir – Mohammad Ramzan Haji, 64, Khurshid Lone, 35, and Arshad Badru, 31 – and mostly on the basis of intercepted telephone calls between him and Haji. ATS charged Baksh with harbouring terrorists in Haj House and financing terrorist activities. The court on Saturday acquitted Baksh, but convicted the three Kashmiris, sentencing them to seven years imprisonment. They were arrested after being found in possession of electronic timer devices, detonators, a pistol, and switches on January 6, 2006. Sitting calmly in his 200-square-foot Crawford Market house with his wife and three teenaged children, Baksh still draws relief from the outcome and says matter-of-factly, “It is not my job to house musafirs (travellers), as it is done by Haj House’s administration. My job is to only hold prayers.” Of the three men, Baksh says he only knew Haji. “But all I knew was that he traded in apples and that he would attend my prayer sessions. My interaction with him was casual and limited.” But with the ATS arresting Baksh soon after Haji’s interrogation, Baksh vented his anger on him in jail. Baksh said, “I couldn’t control myself as I learnt I was branded a terrorist and jailed because of Haji’s claims to the ATS. On several occasions in jail and in court, I have vented my ire at these three Kashmiris, because I was needlessly dragged into this. However, Haji swore to me that he had not framed me. I don’t know what to believe anymore.” A Std VII dropout from Bengal, Baksh was initially an assistant to the imam at Musafirkhana mosque from 1988, and in 1996 he became imam of Haj House. Though jail came as a rude shock, Baksh’s only solace was that almost all inmates looked upon him with respect. “From gangsters like Abu Salem and Mustafa Dossa to petty criminals, I would be showered with sympathy as they believed an imam like me could not be involved in crime. However, the jail staff would often insult me with terrorist references and treat me badly.” Baksh finds it ironic that just days before each of the four times his bail pleas were rejected, some terrorist attack would happen somewhere in India. “Once it was Malegaon, then the series of blasts across Delhi, Ahmedabad, etc and then of course, 26/11. The prosecutor would then oppose my bail, saying I would pose a threat to the tense situation outside.” Baksh spent his last night in jail with a bitter-sweet feeling. “I was neither happy nor sad, because jail had taught me immense patience. And yet I had lost four years of my life and acquired a notorious tag forever. People will now always say ‘Perhaps he had some role in terrorism, or else he wouldn’t have been jailed for four years’.”

Blair cornered, opts for more aggressive defense - By Ghulam Muhammed

Sunday, December 13, 2009

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Blair cornered, opts for more aggressive defense

The public enquiry in UK, about the whole gamut of the British going to war with Iraq, is taking its toll on the main characters in UK, who poodled their way to an illegal and unnecessary war indulged into by a crazy US President and his equally diabolic Vice President’s personal tiff with Iraq’s former dictator, Saddam Hussein.

The enormous price in human sufferings and hundreds and thousands killed in this illegal and most destructive war, has people both in UK and US rising in unison to question the validity and legality of this wanton act of abusing public trust and spending billions of dollars of public fund, that in no measure was the prime cause behind the collapse of the world system of mindless expansion of international credit and the sudden loss of confidence in war economies of the West. War not only destroys the victimized nation, but the aggressors too. This has been a plain historical fact that Bush, Cheney and Blair never took into consideration. Germany and Soviet Union’s example should have been enough to warn these warmongers that even strongest nations, if fallen in this ugly cycle of debt traps and public loss of confidence, would surely and continuously disintegrate.

Before his public testimony, former war Prime Minister, Tony Blair accused by British people of dragging their nation to an unwanted war on false pretext that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, while it was clear to the Government even before the war began that he had none; has now turned aggressive to save his skin, by declaring that even if there was no trace of weapons of mass destructions, Saddam and his two sons, had to go, if the West was to feel secured.

Blair does not bother to explain, at what cost this presumed security? Hundreds of thousands died, even before Saddam murdered a single Western civilian and/or armed man. This preventive strike did prove to be more costly than any threat that Saddam posed, both in human and resource terms. Besides, who will compensate for the wholesale massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis by US and UK cowardly aerial bombings? A single strike by German forces in Afghanistan that killed about a hundred Afghan civilians, gathered to collect fuel from the stricken oil tankers, bombed by German plane, resulted in the sacking of Germany’s man in command who misjudged the whole scenario.

Will there be no reprisals on the warmonger few in US and UK, who have made deliberately misjudgment and fooled their own people to carry out their personal agenda?

 If there is any international justice and an International Court of Justice that is not subservient to partisan politics of the West, Bush, Cheney and Blair should be hauled and charged for war crimes.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai