Harsh Mander: Living in the shadow of jail, torture – the account of two Muslims acquitted of terror

Imagine you are innocent of any crime. But a day arrives when the police arrest you. They subject you to nightmarish torture. Then they charge you with heinous crimes of terror and treason.

Imagine after this you are locked behind prison walls for maybe nine, maybe 14, maybe 19 years.

Imagine you are sentenced to death and wait interminable years for the morning you will be marched to the gallows.

Imagine then one day that a higher court rules that you are entirely innocent.

You find yourself free.

You walk through the prison gates into an utterly unfamiliar world. A world that has passed you by. A world hostile or indifferent to the monumental injustice you have endured.

You step into a home where your loved ones have died, or wracked by your suffering aged beyond recognition. You see your children whose entire childhood you missed.

You understand that you suffered this way only because of the religion into which you were born.

Sadly, this has become the story of too many lives in a republic that claims to be a secular democracy ruled by justice and the law.

The last decade of the 20th century and the first of the 21st century saw a series of terror attacks and bomb explosions in different corners of the country....

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