WASHINGTON, July 27: Kashmiri leader Ghulam Nabi Fai’s lawyers submitted the bond money on Wednesday after a US federal court accepted their plea to release him on bail.
On Tuesday, Judge Thomas Rawles Jones ordered Mr Fai’s release on a personal bond of $100,000, rejecting the prosecution’s plea to keep him in prison because of flight risks. But he also ordered to put Mr Fai under house arrest and electronic monitoring.
Prosecutor Gordon Kromberg, however, argued strongly against granting bail, claiming that during interrogation Mr Fai had admitted his “affiliation” with the ISI. The prosecutor claimed that the ISI had given him money, “approved” his budgets, and directed his policies.
Mr Fai is charged with a criminal conspiracy to act as an agent of Pakistan in the US without registering as a lobbyist and falsifying and concealing facts. The maximum sentence on both counts is five years.
His lawyer Nina Ginsberg successfully argued that Mr Fai had willingly met the FBI whenever asked to do so, once returning from London to meet them and that’s why he posed no flight risk. She dismissed the prosecution’s contention that the ISI would be “obliged” to defend him and may whisk him away. She called it “wild speculation”.
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