Unfolding the Past, Proving the Present: Social Media Evidence in Terrorism Finance Court Cases

During terrorism trials, social media activities such as tweeting, Facebook posts, and WhatsApp conversations have become an essential part of the evidence presented. Amidst the complexity of prosecuting crimes with limited possibilities for criminal investigations and evidence collection, social media interactions can provide valuable information to reconstruct events that occurred there-and-then, to prosecute in the here-and-now. This paper follows social media objects as evidentiary objects in different court judgments to research how security practices and knowledge interact with legal practices in the court room. I build on the notion of the folding object as described by Bruno Latour and Amade M'charek to research the practices and arguments of the judges through which they unfold some of the histories, interpretations, and politics inside the object as reliable evidence. This concept allows for an in-depth examination of how histories are entangled in the presentation of an evidentiary object and how these references to histories are made (in)visible during legal discussions on security and terrorism. The paper therefore contributes to the field of critical security studies by focusing on how security practices are mediated in the everyday legal settings of domestic court rooms.

The social life of technicalities: ‘Terrorist’ lives in Delhi’s courts

How do we imagine the place of courtrooms in relation to society? There have been two dominant ways that ethnographers have viewed trials. The first treats trials as ways of understanding social structures and political power. In relation to terrorism trials, the courtroom becomes the arena in which nationalist politics can be re-enacted. There is the space of a pre-existing society—with all its hierarchies and conflicts—and the court case is then merely affixed to the social. The second way, which has a minor role in scholarship on India, has imagined courtrooms as theatrical spaces in which society is discursively constructed. In this article, I argue that an ethnography of courtrooms can be a way of accessing the space of courtroom on its own terms. I argue that the technologies of law set in place their own relations and forms of sociality and that the courtroom is a world in and of itself. Based on an ethnography of terrorism trials in Delhi, I show how the terrorism trial is not only the arena in which bigger contestations over nationalism and religious identity may play out; it is also the space in which new forms of life specific to the courtroom emerge.

When protective powers become threatening

<p>Indefinite and preventive detention: two archetypal danger-areas for the civil-libertarian mind. Both are permitted by criminal and mental health law, subject to the safeguards provided by common law and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Watchful eyes need to remain focused on the interpretation of such powers of detention.</p><p><br />That any coercive power that can be abused by authority will be so abused seems a reasonable rule of thumb. Certainly it is the assumption on which responsible legislators ought to work; even if they are willing to trust their own imperturbability in the face of events they have no right to do so, or so to trust their successors. Stop-and-search has been heavily abused, while the limits on control orders are under<br />judicial scrutiny domestically and at Strasbourg.</p><p><br />Terrorism trials and those involving notoriously violent criminals catch headlines, especially where mental disorder is involved. My concern here is the looseness of provisions which, operating out of the public eye, can indefinitely detain people on preventive grounds.</p>