Yale's actions and the rule of law, Kannan Srinivasan, March 12th 2025

In suspending Helyeh Doutaghi, an eminent Palestinian legal scholar,

because an artificial intelligence-directed website   https://jewishonliner.org/p/member-of-us-designated-terror-group had termed her a terrorist https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/us/yale-suspends-scholar-terrorism.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare (on the claims inter alia that she had been present at public gatherings where terrorists so designated were also present and also that terrorists so designated had interviewed her and that what she had said was replayed at gatherings of terrorists so designated)

--  without even giving her the right to be heard –

Yale seems to have adopted the extraordinary legal technology pioneered by India, namely that audi alteram partem is simply not necessary.

In a statement Tuesday, Yale Law School described the allegations against Dr. Doutaghi as reflecting “potential unlawful conduct.”

“We take these allegations extremely seriously and immediately opened an investigation into the matter to ascertain the facts,” said the statement, issued by Alden Ferro, a spokesman for Yale Law. 

This of course coincidentally follows at least in part the rule of the felicitously named “Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (sic)”  of 1967 of India as amended in 2008 and in 2019, which allow an individual to be designated as a terrorist, and the ratio of the Ahmad Shah Watali case, https://digiscr.sci.gov.in/view_judgment?id=MTI3MDk= by the Supreme Court of India, that what the National Investigative Agency said must be presumed to be true and the burden of proof lay on the accused therefore to disprove allegations rather than that guilt must be proven at all.

Section 43D(5) in The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 says at (5) that Notwithstanding anything contained in the Code, no person accused of an offence punishable under Chapters IV and VI of this Act shall, if in custody, be released on bail or on his own bond unless the Public Prosecutor has been given an opportunity of being heard on the application for such release:Provided that such accused person shall not be released on bail or on his own bond if the Court, on a perusal of the case diary or the report made under section 173 of the Code is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation against such person is prima facie true.

See also The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act 2008: Repeating Past Mistakes

Author(s): South Asia Human RIghts Documentation Centre and Ravi Nair

Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Jan. 24 - 30, 2009, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Jan. 24 - 30,

2009), pp. 10-14

 


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