Sharjah Update

It's high time to give an update on an earlier story covered here concerning 17 Indian workers in Sharjah, UAE facing the death penalty for the death of a Pakistani. When we last left off, the condemned were awaiting an appeal to be filed by their home nation.

That appeal has been filed, and as it happens, the Indian government will pick up the legal tab.

That's not all that's happened since we last checked in. The group Lawyers for Human Rights International made a visit to the condemned, and they allege torture. Quoting from India Blooms:

LFHRI said the prisoners reported that none of them was arrested from the spot [the act was committed in 2008; the prisoners have been incarcerated for nine months] and on their arrest they were brutally tortured by giving beatings to them for continuous 9 days by police men of CID branch [Criminal Investigation Department].

They were beaten with Golf clubs & plastic pipes and were also given electric shocks. They were made to stand on one foot and not allowed to sleep and asked to make confessions to the crime, which as per their version they never committed," Navkiran Singh, who is LFHRI general secretary, told IBNS [India Blooms News Service].

However in spite of brutal torture, they never confessed. Some of these prisoners also showed their injuries received by them in the police interrogation and also disclosed that the said injuries are contained in their medical reports, said Singh, who visited the prisoners in the jail.

I'll keep you posted.