NEW YORK: The chairman of the Sikh temple in Queens walked past a crowd of worshippers and pointed at a large photo of a modern day Sikh martyr the corpse raw and bloody.
“That’s what will happen to the two young men if they’re sent home” he told a visitor recently. He was explaining what he feared for two Sikhs who next month will begin their fifth year in federal prison pending extradition to India for suspected militant activities.
For many of the marchers in Manhattan’s Vaisakhi Parade April 20 it’s a virtual article of faith that the two men would be tortured if returned to India to face trial. Amnesty International a human rights organisation agrees.
Ranjit Singh Gill and Sukhminder Singh Sandhu are like Asian counterparts of former Trish Republican Army member Joseph Doherty: They’ve been imprisoned for years while their case takes some strange turns through the federal courts.
Jagjit Singh Mangat chairman of the thriving Richmond Hill temple likens their case to Doherty’s 8-yr imprisonment pending possible deportation to the United Kingdom. Like Doherty accused of slaying a British army officer they are charged with politically motivated murders. “It’s exactly the same thing only with Joe Doherty the community is stronger than we are” said Mangat. “We are first generation here that’s the difference.”
If Gill and Sandhu were returned to India Amnesty International contends in papers filed at U.S District Court in Manhattan they would “risk being sentenced to death following an unfair trial killed in a false encounter staged by the police or tortured.
Thousands of people have been slain during the last decade in violence involving Sikh militants. Indian police and crowds Of people angered at the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Sikhs in 1984 went on a rampage hilling thousands of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere. Amnesty International said that any Sikhs who want the Punjab state where most of them live to separate from India face the risk of police tortures.
Gill and Sandhu both advocate on independent Punjab. Both say their lives were changed by an event that continues to horrify Sikhs. In 1984 the Indian army attacked the Sikh’s holiest place Golden Temple of Amritsar killing thousands of people. After that Gill and Sandhu say in
Court papers they both became more deeply involved in the Sikh religion and in the separatist movement.
India Army that Gill and Sandhu went further than mere advocacy it asserts they became militant’s. Gill who had planned to enter a doctoral botany program at Kansas State University and is the son of a leading agricultural researcher in India was charged with murdering an Indian parliament member and his wife. Sandhu a former graduate student who is a close friend of Gill was charged with robbery murder of a police officer and conspiracy to murder Gen Arun S. Valdya who commanded the army assault on the Golden Temple.
Faced with what the two former college classmates say were false charges and the risk of police torture or murder Gill and Sandhu fled to the United States in 1985 Arrested in 1987 they’ve first had to deal with a bizarre obstacle in the American court system.
When they were brought to federal court in Newark an assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey wrote anonymous threatening letters to herself and the magistrate. The unwitting defendants were there after brought to court in chains sharpshooters were posted on the rooftops and friends and law years who attended the hearings were searched three times before they could enter the courtroom.
In February 1988 the magistrate ordered their extradition. The following month federal authorities said they discovered that the prosecutor Judy Russail had created the death threats. She was found not guilty of obstruction of justice by reasons of insanity in 1989.
For Sikhs scars from the strange incident remain. The damage she has done to the Sikh community is terrible” Manget said. “It was very painful to watch these two young men get their taste of justice chained up like animals said Mary Pike a defense lawyer in the case who also represents Doherty. An appeal of the extradition order was field at federal court in Manhattan Pike and the two other defense attorneys in the case William Kunstler and Ronald Kuby later made a startling discovery. An Indian newspaper reported that an Indian judge had ruled invalid the key confession against their clients because it was coerced. Kuby said that since such proceedings are secret in India under anti-terrorism flaws the U.S defense team didn’t know the witness had recanted.
After 20 months the Indian government still hadn’t mentioned this to the U.S. prosecutors who were handling their extradition request.
A spokesman for the Indian embassy in Washington declined to comment on the case.
Last September U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet overturned the extradition order. Now after four years Gill and Sandhu are starting over. The government has filed a new extradition request for India which dropped the charge involving the murder of the Indian general. The case is before U.S. District Court Judge David N. Edelstein in Manhattan.
David Denton the federal prosecutor in the case said the government’s remaining evidence includes eyewitness identifications and shows that there is reason to believe Gill and Sandhu committed crimes in India. The government maintains it’s up to the State Department not the courts to decide if the two men would face persecution for their beliefs if extradited.
Gill and Sandhu deny the charges but say they shouldn’t be returned to India for trial because they’ll probably be tortured or murdered. In court papers they describe themselves as devout Sikhs who were deeply offended by the attack on the Golden Temple which they liken to the Vatican or Mecca.
“My devotion to my besieged religion grew “Gill wrote in court papers filed by his attorneys-
Pike and Kuby went to India in 1987 to learn firsthand about the treatment of Sikhs.
Kuby said Indian authorities would not let them travel to Punjab but people arrived in a border city after journeying in ox carts so they could tell the American lawyers about wide spread police torture of Sikhs. When they returned they filed affidavits in court that detail allegations of grotesque torture in which Sikhs said they were blindfolded and hung upside down for as long as 25 days had their fingernails pulled out their bodies shocked with electric current.
The youngest torture victim we interviewed was 11 years old “Kuby said. “After a while it became an overwhelming emotional experience because here were people who had suffered more than anything I’d ever seen.”
“It was one of the most wrenching experiences I’ve ever been through” Pike said
New York
News day
Article extracted from this publication >> April 26, 1991
