Making A Difference

Caught In A Spanish Maze

Man picked from a mosque in Barcelona and jailed on terror charges wants to seek damages

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Caught In A Spanish Maze
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Troubled Timeline

  • March 2005: First visited Spain to try to set up an olive oil trading business. Returns after a month.
  • January 2008: Arrested with 10 Pakistanis after night prayers from a mosque on charges of conspiring to blow up the Barcelona Metro, belonging to a terror group
  • December 2009: Convicted and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail after four days of trial
  • December 2010: Charges of conspiracy and possession of explosives are dropped. Sentence reduced to six years.
  • January 2014: Back in India after six years in prison. The charge of being part of an armed gang remains. Wants to clear his name.
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Behram Baug in Jogeshwari, a warren of winding alleys and narrow, roughly clustered houses, is one of Mumbai’s many Muslim bastis. In this chaotic ghetto, the well-groomed and pleasant Roshan Jamal Khan, 56, stands out, burly and white-bearded, cracking jokes and laughing out loud. His English is fluent and he has a smattering of Spa­­nish. The Bambaiyya in his spe­­ech says he’s very much of this city. And he will tell you he’s glad to be back. The six years he spent in a jail in Spain, convicted of a terror plot, must be weighing heavy on him. He says he is innocent.

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Despite his cheerfulness, Jamalbhai, as he’s known in the neighbourhood, cannot hide the fatigue of the jail years, the travails of his family, the non-stop media interviews he has been through in the few days since his return. It’s a sho­cking story, if his claims of innocence are true. It should goad the Indian government—which seems to have done little to help a citizen in trouble with the law abroad—to take up the matter with Spain.

Jamal, who was visiting Spain for the second time to work out an olive oil business, was arrested from a Barcelona mosque after night prayers on January 18, 2008, along with 10 Pakistani nationals. In 2009, after a four-day trial, they were all convicted of a conspiracy to set off bombs in the Barcelona metro, possession of explosives and being part of an armed gang. He got eight-and-a-half years. The charges of conspiracy and possession of explosives were later dropped. Last month, the sentence was reduced to six years, bringing him early freedom, but not the satisfaction of a go at proving his innocence.

“They dropped the first two charges, but I’m still a convict. I need to clear my name in the absolute and press for damages,” he says. He cites the Wikileaks cables in his defence: in one of them, the then Spanish ambassador to the US had said the suspects in the Barcelona metro case had no Al Qaeda links. The way two big charges were dropped suggests that the evidence brought against him may not have been  evaluated properly, ruining his life and that of his family.

Jamal, who graduated from Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College, had always dreamt of running a business. “My father had a dairy business in south Mumbai. I’d worked in a travel agency in Kuwait and wanted to set up something of my own,” he says. “After researching, I thought importing olive oil would be a good idea. My brother-in-law was in Barcelona, so I thought I could take his help.”

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He made his first trip to Spain in 2005.  On his second trip, four months into his stay, he was picked up, blindfolded and handcuffed. He couldn’t understand any­­thing. “I hadn’t foreseen this in my wildest dreams. I didn’t know the langu­age, couldn’t meet anyone,” he says. “Our lawyer assured me I’d be freed. I trusted him because I was truly innocent.”

That was not to be.  He doesn’t want to dwell on the prison years. “I wasn’t tortured, but wherever I went, even for a haircut, someone would lock the door after me. It was a high-security place. That does play on your mind,” he says.

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News of his arrest trickled to his family; the Indian media picked up his story. Jamal is upset that officials of the Indian embassy in Spain seemed to have a pre-conceived opinion of him. “They asked me several times how and when I went to Pakistan, and I kept saying I’d never been there. I realised they were not going to be of much help,” he says with a wry smile.

Yusuf Muchhala, a senior lawyer who has taken up many terror cases, says government apathy is the main problem. “Jamal didn’t receive any assistance,” he says. “We aren’t concerned about the freedom of our citizens because of stereotypical profiling. This is definitely a violation of human rights.”

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While Jamal spent time in jail trying to learn Spanish and understand the laws under which he was being held, his family tried its best to cope. His brother Mehboob Khan made several representations to the government and started a blog to draw attention to Jamal’s plight. In 2011, their father passed away without a glimpse of his eldest son.

The troubles Jamal’s wife Farida and their six children went through were endless. Besides the sinking finances, there were social pressures. “I’d never stepped out. I’d always been busy with household work, he used to manage everything,” she says. “Suddenly,  I had to look after everything—money, his case, the family.” Their son quit studies after Std xii and has been working for four years now to bring in some money. He’s now with a call centre.

The family now wants to fight it out to ensure that Jamal’s name is cleared of all charges and he is compensated for the excruciating ordeal he has been forced to undergo. Says advocate Muchhala, “It’s the government’s responsibility to protect citizens abroad. Also, there seems to be no accountability on the part of the people in command. Terrorism is a very serious offence, but action against suspects needs to be based on evidence. Those in command must be held accountable and the possibility of obtaining compensation must be explored.”

Jan Khan, a lawyer from the UK who is appearing for all the 11 accused in the case, plans to go about it systematically. “We’ll first appeal to the Spanish Sup­reme Court for quashing the conviction. If that’s not accepted, we’ll proceed to the European Court of Human Rights,” he says. “We’re in the process of preparing the submission. The previous lawyers had not prepared the case well, so it became inadmissible. We’re hoping we’ll be able to prove that all 11 were innocent. Within six months everything should be ready.”

But even if Jamal gets some compensa­tion from the Spanish and Indian gover­nments, it is not going to bring back what he has lost. His dreams of having a business of his own lie shattered. He cannot obtain visa for any EU country for some years. His family, once well-to-do, now teeters on the edge of pove­rty. And of those six long years in a prison, staring at the walls with no one to speak to, Jamal can only wish he could wipe them away from his life—like the terror taint he hopes the courts will.

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