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India Prepares 28k Chargesheet Against Shami Witness

The Bangladore Police say they will file charges against Mehdi Masroor Biswas, aka @Shami Witness, next week.

We have finally received the MHA’s approval. Now, we will file the chargesheet against him next week. We have built a solid case. We had to prove how he conspired and helped the IS. Consequently, the chargesheet is one of the longest in recent times,” a source in the Bengaluru Police said. The chargesheet is supposed to be in excess of 28,000 pages.

[More...]

“It was a laborious process, as we had to record every detail of his activities on two different Twitter handles. We also had to include the incriminating evidence that we obtained from his laptop and smartphone. We have a strong case against him,” the source added.

My thoughts the day of his arrest remain the same:

Shami Witness did not recruit for ISIS. He was not a member of ISIS. There's no indication he got his information from any official ISIS source. There's no indication he was paid or compensated by ISIS.He was followed by many Western militants, researchers, analysts, journalists and bloggers because of his reputation as being knowledgeable and because (1) his English was very good and (2) he knew who to follow on Twitter to get and tweet out the news faster than most. Yes, he took ISIS' side in his tweets. But he also disagreed with them at times. Yes, he may have communicated with some British ISIS fighters and retweeted the accounts of ISIS fighters. Yes he is a propagandist of ISIS views. But as researcher Aymenn Jawad al-Tamini says, his role on Twitter was really just one of a disseminator and aggregator of ISIS news.

...I find ISIS' actions as abhorrent as everyone else does. I think ISIS' views are a twisted interpretation of Islam and that Sharia law is barbaric. But I still say #FreeShamiWitness. Expressing one's support for an unpopular group one isn't a member of and hasn't provided tangible assistance to should not be a crime.

Free Shami Witness.

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  • Display: Sort:
    28,000 pages? (5.00 / 1) (#1)
    by cpinva on Sun May 24, 2015 at 10:24:07 PM EST
    geez, what'd they do, put one word on each page? that has to be some kind of world record, for a single legal document. it sounds like they've transcribed every word he ever wrote, and made it part of the charges against him, hoping something would stick, like, oh, I don't know, "felony bad prose".

    Ken Starr's Indian cousin wrote it? (5.00 / 2) (#2)
    by Mr Natural on Wed May 27, 2015 at 11:58:10 AM EST
    LOL! (none / 0) (#3)
    by Zorba on Wed May 27, 2015 at 04:43:30 PM EST
    You caused me to spew Diet Coke on my tablet.
    Good thing it wipes off easily.   ;-)

    Parent