Ahnaf Jazeem, a teacher and poet, has been indicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act after being jailed for 18 months for using anti-terrorism laws to write a anthology of poetry.
The Attorney General’s Department and the Counter Terrorism Investigation Division have jointly filed the charges. The case against Ahnaf Jasim was heard in the Puttalam High Court on Monday, November 15.
Attorney-at-Law Sanjaya Wilson Jayasekara, who represents Ahnaf Jazeem, a young poet who is well known among the Tamil readership as Mannarmudu Ahnaf, says that the Counter Terrorism Investigation Division (CTID) has filed charges against his client as a conspiracy.
The lawyer further pointed out that the CTID had joined hands with the relevant parties and filed the indictment without informing Ahnaf, who has been named as the suspect, and himself, who is acting as his lawyer.
The Attorney General says that the Attorney General’s opinion regarding the dates of the trial and the granting of bail to the poet will be announced at the next hearing scheduled for December 15.
Ahnaf Jazeem was arrested by the Counter Terrorism Investigation Division (CTID) in connection with the compilation of the poem Navarasam written in 2017 and accused for exposing his student to ‘extremist’ ideologies in an attempt to make them followers of ‘extremist ideologies’.
He was arrested on May 16, 2020 and detained by the Anti-Terrorism and Investigation Division for more than a year before being remanded in custody for more than a year.