By Jaideep Sarin
IANS
Chandigarh : A Chandigarh-based lawyer has filed a case on behalf a 'stateless' former US citizen and CIA financial contractor before the UN human rights agency in Geneva.
Guneet Chaudhary, a former major of the Indian Army and now a practising Supreme Court lawyer, has filed a case on behalf of Harmon Wilfred before UN High Commissioner on Human Rights seeking political asylum in New Zealand for him and demanding a compensation of $30 million "for a decade of flagrant human rights violations against him by the US".
"This is a unique case where an Indian lawyer is fighting the human rights case of a US citizen in an UN agency," Chaudhary told IANS here.
Wilfred claims that he was hounded by CIA and other US agencies after he turned a whistleblower and exposed several financial scandals within the CIA. He claimed that he exposed how CIA funds were being misused.
Wilfred became stateless March 1, 2005 with the irrevocable renouncement of his US citizenship. He has been residing with his Canadian wife in New Zealand's Christchurch city since then, running a global Internet company.
Chaudhary, who filed Wilfred's complaint with the UN human rights agency April 12 this year through his law firm – Jurisconsultus, moved an application with the same agency May 11 seeking an unprecedented political asylum for Wilfred in New Zealand.
In his complaint, Wilfred stated that he had had enough of living as 'persona non grata' in the shadow of what he alleged was over a decade of flagrant US violations of his human rights.
"Wilfred's UN complaint and refugee petition number 7440099 alleges violations of 11 articles under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including death threats by the CIA, incarceration for 120 days in an underground maximum security prison in Canada, 21 days in a US federal prison in Colorado, and four days in the Denver city jail by order of federal marshals without charges or bail," says Chaudhary, his international legal advisor and human rights advocate.
The petition seeks the "restoration of Wilfred's and his three children's inalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness".
Chaudhary, who has handled several international cases from matrimonial disputes to immigration to human rights violations in many countries, claimed that Wilfred had no criminal convictions in the past.