America’s largest umbrella body of Muslim associations condemns sentencing of Asiya Andrabi, associates

WASHINGTON (MNTV) — The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, America’s largest umbrella body of Muslim associations, has strongly condemned India’s sentencing of three Kashmiri women leaders to lengthy prison terms, calling the verdicts a miscarriage of justice and urging the Trump administration to impose sanctions on New Delhi over its human rights record in Kashmir.

In a statement released on April 1, the USCMO condemned the March 24 sentencing of Asiya Andrabi, 64, to three life terms, and her associates Nahida Nasreen, 61, and Sofi Fehmeeda, 36, to thirty years each, by a special NIA court in Delhi.

The organization noted that the court itself acquitted all three women of the most serious charges against them — waging war against India, funding terrorism, and membership in a terrorist organization — before convicting them on lesser offences rooted in speech, association, and perceived intent.

“The special intelligence court shockingly sentenced Andrabi to three life sentences only because she has risen in the last 40 years to become one of Kashmir’s most prominent political leaders,” the statement said.

Legal argument

The USCMO’s statement drew heavily on court documents to argue that the convictions amounted to the criminalization of political belief. It noted that the prosecution, having failed to prove any act of violence after examining fifty-three witnesses, shifted its legal basis to Section 18 of the UAPA — a provision that allows prosecution not for violence committed, but for violence the court perceives was intended.

The organization cited a May 2025 report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which found that the UAPA had “evolved into a mechanism of administrative control” used to detain human rights defenders, activists, and critics “not for acts of violence, but for their speech, assemblies, and affiliations.”

The statement also highlighted what it called the court’s most revealing reasoning: that the women’s refusal to show remorse was treated as an aggravating factor, and that the court suggested leniency might have been appropriate had they been uneducated.

Andrabi holds postgraduate degrees in biochemistry, Arabic, and Islamic Studies.

Background

Andrabi founded the Dukhtaran-e-Millat — Daughters of the Nation — in Srinagar in 1985, beginning with women’s religious education circles that expanded into a broader movement focused on Islamic education, women’s rights, and resistance to what the group described as the exploitation of Kashmiri women. She has spent fifteen of the last thirty years in Indian prisons, mostly without charge, detained repeatedly under the Public Safety Act — described by Amnesty International as a “lawless law.”

Her husband, Dr Muhammad Qasim Faktoo, has been imprisoned since 1993 and is widely considered Kashmir’s longest-serving political prisoner. Despite a court order permitting the couple to speak by phone twice a month, the USCMO said jail authorities have prevented them from communicating since 2016. They have not seen each other since that year.

Andrabi and her associates have been held in Tihar Jail, New Delhi — over eight hundred kilometers from their homes in Kashmir — since their arrest in April 2018.

Demands

The USCMO called on several UN special rapporteurs — including the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, and the Chair of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention — to intervene and press India for the immediate and unconditional release of all three women.

It also urged the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation to hold hearings on India’s conduct in Kashmir, and called on President Trump to institute a full sanctions regime against India for what it described as widespread and growing human rights abuses against Kashmiris, Indian Muslims, Christians, and Dalit communities.

“We urge President Trump to directly communicate with Prime Minister Modi on these issues, including the wrongful imprisonment of Aasiya Andrabi, Nahida Nasreen, and Sofi Fehmeeda,” the statement said.

The organization also called on American Muslims and members of the public to contact their congressional representatives to seek the women’s release.

Andrabi’s sentencing on March 24 makes her the first Kashmiri woman to receive a life sentence for her participation in Kashmir’s self-determination movement. An appeal to the Delhi High Court is expected.