Mubeen Shah, the cousin of Sameera Fazili was among those held under the Public Safety Act (PSA) in the Valley clampdown coinciding with the scrapping of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir
Kashmiri origin woman Fazili, will be part of the Joe Biden Administration.
Shah’s mother and Fazili’s father are siblings, and the family had tapped into their Washington and Delhi connections to help secure his release, Indian Express reported.
Fazili was picked by the new US President as Deputy Director of the National Economic Council (NEC), a policy body that is part of the White House. She had been a senior advisor in the NEC during the Obama Administration.
Shah was released in December 2019, and his is a rare case in which the J-K administration withdrew the PSA.
Fazili’s sister Yousra Fazili, a human rights lawyer, was among the Kashmiris who testified at the November 2019 US Congressional hearing on the situation in the Valley. She spoke in detail about her cousin’s sudden arrest, his health condition and how members of her Srinagar-based family had gone “from jail to jail in Srinagar” trying to find out where he had been taken. She said she could not begin to describe how closely knit the entire family was.
In her testimony, Yousra added that she and Fazili had dialled friends in the State Department on learning about Shah’s arrest on August 8, 2019. And that they were only able to confirm he was imprisoned in Agra after the State Department placed an “informational request” with the Indian government on his status.
“My cousin Mubeen has been made an example of. His imprisonment sends a strong signal to the people of Kashmir that money, family and status mean nothing in the face of Indian capriciousness,” she said in her testimony, going on to talk about how “armed forces are conducting night raids on homes and pulling young men and boys from their beds into military custody” in Kashmir.
Her cousin, she said, was “not a politician or a dissident, he isn’t a freedom fighter, or even a kid in the street throwing stones. He’s just a businessman. His life’s work has focused on bringing economic opportunity to Kashmir”.
Shah, who is based in Malaysia and owns a crafts business, was arrested when visiting Kashmir along with his wife.
In October 2020, incidentally, the J-K Police said they were seeking to arrest Shah through Interpol over a purported Facebook post by him. J-K Director General of Police Dilbagh Singh said they had registered a case for the post that allegedly targeted non-local people living in the Valley. The DGP said they had initiated the process to declare Shah a proclaimed offender and attach his properties in Kashmir. But there has been no movement on this.
Fazili is one of two Kashmiri-origin members in the Biden team. The other is Aisha Shah, the partnership manager at the White House office of Digital Strategy.
