SRINAGAR: Ghulam Nabi Fai, secretary general of Washington D.C.-based World Kashmir Awareness Forum, was declared a proclaimed offender (PO) under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, by a NIA court in Kashmir on Thursday.
The special judge of Budgam NIA court directed Kashmir-born Fai to surrender before J&K Police within 30 days.
Earlier, police told the court that Fai, 77, a native of Wadwan in Budgam and now a US citizen, has failed to appear before it in the UAPA case even after warrants were issued against him. Police said he is wanted in a case registered in Budgam under UAPA sections 10, 13, and 39, which relate to membership of unlawful associations, involvement in unlawful activities, and support to a banned terrorist organisation, respectively.
Police said Fai is “concealing himself in the US”, and has “persistently evaded arrest, obstructing the legal process and avoiding accountability under the law”.
On July 19, 2011 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had arrested Fai, along with a Pakistani American, Zaheer Ahmad. They were charged with falsifying, concealing and covering up material facts as they lobbied with US govt without disclosing that they were being funded by Pakistan govt, including its spy agency ISI.
On Dec 7, 2011, a statement by the US department of justice said Fai had “pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax violations in connection with a decades-long scheme to conceal the transfer of at least $3.5 million from the govt of Pakistan to fund his lobbying efforts in America related to Kashmir”. The statement further said: “Fai served as the director of the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), a non-governmental organisation in Washington, D.C., that held itself out to be run by Kashmiris, financed by Americans and dedicated to raising the level of knowledge in the United States about the struggle of the Kashmiri people for self-determination. But according to court documents, KAC was secretly funded by officials employed by the govt of Pakistan, including the ISI directorate.”
In March 2012, a US court sentenced him to two years in prison for a “conspiracy to defraud the US”. However, in Nov 2013 he was released by the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, as the court reduced his sentence to 16 months.
