On March 30, 2012, Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, the man the international diplomatic community has known for more than 20 years as the ambassador for Kashmir to the United States, stood before Judge Liam O’Grady in a federal court in Virginia. He received a sentence of two years for the part he played as a director in funding the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), using contributions that had allegedly skirted certain tax regulations, regarding how they may be made to a non-profit organisation. The technicalities involved in the sources of that money and how it ended up in the bank accounts of the KAC are still too complex for me to really understand, and probably not worth going into anyway, but it is clear from the outcome that some violation of tax laws did occur and Dr Fai was willing to take the rap for it. In fact, both he and his wife believe sincerely that the judge was quite fair in handing down the sentence. Although Dr Fai’s reputation was sullied momentarily by charges that he was a spy for the Pakistani ISI and illegally lobbied members of Congress and two presidents, none of that proved true, and such charges were voluntarily dropped by the prosecution.
What is quite dismaying, however, is the mincemeat that was made of this sentence by the press. Despite the rather mundane issue of a so-called tax dodging, many in the press continued to allege falsely that he had been convicted of being on the payroll of the ISI, convicted of being an unregistered lobbyist, convicted of advocating and propagating the Pakistani position on Kashmir, and convicted of trying to influence the US government for the benefit of Pakistan. Therefore, it is important to set the record straight.
Although initially charged under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) as an unregistered agent of Pakistan, Dr Fai was never convicted on this allegation, which seemed clearly intended to support negotiations the US and Hillary Clinton were engaged in with India at the time. Politically motivated and entirely fraudulent, the US government believed that Dr Fai’s reputation and career were expendable for whatever trite and meaningless advantage it may have offered in the politics of deal making.
As his attorney, Nina Ginsburg stated during the hearing, “Judge, I think Mr Kromberg’s arguments to the Court are appalling. [Federal investigators] have a lot of words that were captured in intercepts, 20 years of intercepts, hundreds of thousands of interprets, and Mr Kromberg cannot stand in front of this Court with one example of a statement, a public statement by Dr Fai, a writing by Dr Fai, a position taken at a conference he sponsored, not one, not one word, that is anything that could be characterised as propaganda for the Pakistani government. It is an outrage for [the prosecutor] to say that that is what that man spent 20 years of his life doing when his writings, which, unfortunately, took up a lot of paper, and I apologise for burdening the Court, everyone of his writings, every declaration of every one of those conferences, what came out of the mouth of this man was, [quote] I’m not taking a side. This is important, tens of thousands of people are dying, pay attention to what’s happening in Kashmir.”
“And his letters,” Ms Ginsburg continued, “he submitted letters to two presidents of this country saying, I’m not taking a position, everyone has to give something, no one is going to be satisfied. There is not one word that Mr Kromberg can point to that Dr Fai ever uttered that was propaganda for the government of Pakistan. He received suggestions from people who would participate in these conferences. He accepted some and rejected some. Topics, one of the topics that appears in these communications, the Pakistanis want him to raise the matter of 2,700 mass graves discovered in Kashmir.”
“Well, the Pakistanis didn’t have to tell him that that is a topic that should be discussed at an international peace conference. There were 2,700 mass graves discovered in Kashmir,” his attorney added.
(To be continued)
The writer is a Director of United Progressives and the Director of American Affairs for the International Council for Human Rights and Justice