Delhi, BBC News
BBC15 years ago, a colleague invited a student who had a different student who was facing imprisonment from the US due to despair charges, and it altered the course of Badar Khan Suri’s life.
On that summer evening, Mr Suri had been sitting outside his department at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia university when a classmate announced that an international aid convoy was set to go to Gaza – the Palestinian territory run by the armed Islamist group Hamas and under blockade by Israel.
The wagon, which included more than 150 people from various Asian nations, provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for students of conflict studies to get up close and personal with one of the most controversial disputes in the world.
A colleague recalled to the BBC that Mr. Suri was willing to participate.
Mapheze Saleh, a Arab and the child of a previous Hamas director, was the subject of his encounter during this journey, and he wed her a few months later.
The few relocated to the US where Mr. Suri became a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University after living there for almost ten years.
He had been living in Virginia for nearly three years when the police knocked on his door on the evening of 17 March and arrested him.
Tricia McLaughlin, the admin secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, tweeted that Mr. Suri was being detained for his” close links to a known or suspected criminal, a senior adviser to Hamas, on March 20.” He has refuted the claims.
This action comes in response to President Donald Trump’s assault on activists and illegal immigrants who stage pro-Palestinian college protests, which the authorities have accused of promoting racism and supporting Hamas. The US has labeled the class a terrorist organization. However, India has certainly outlawed Hamas.
Although a US court has blocked Mr. Suri’s imprisonment, his legal entry into the country on a scholar card. However, those who know him there are shocked by the evil claims.
His classmates and teachers said they found complaints of him having ties to Hamas to be “tenuous,” while his companions describe him as a soft-spoken, quiet, and talented student with a wide knowledge of the world.
India has always backed the Arab cause. In recent years, Delhi has maintained tight, strategic relationships with Israel, with Delhi frequently refusing to criticize Israel’s actions.
Even so,” by no stretch of imagination is Suri been associated with something unlawful,” a Jamia professor told the BBC.
” Having a watch on the ongoing fight is not a crime. It is perfectly appropriate for a professor who studies discord to reveal his analysis of the Gaza war.
Related opinions were shared by those who traveled with him.
One of the caravan’s organizers, Feroze Mithiborwala, described Mr. Suri as a smart young gentleman.
He consistently spoke in a liberal manner during our conversations. He claimed that he wasn’t some sort of right-wing Islamist.
The journey started in Delhi in December 2010. The fleet had to travel to Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt before arriving in Gaza because India’s neighbor Pakistan refused to grant them a go force.
One of Mr. Suri’s companions who even went on the journey claimed that the path, which most of the time was covered by bus, offered a lot for a student of peace and conflict research.
He continued to focus on aiding the widowed and older and was deeply moved by the suffering he witnessed throughout the journey.
Another classmate said that Mr. Suri’s interest was generally academic, but the caravan “brought Mr. Suri nearer to the Israeli cause” until days before his arrest.
The next and final moment Mr. Suri and Ms. Saleh visited Gaza was for their own wedding.
Ms. Saleh, a US resident, had been volunteering and working as a speaker in Gaza at the time.
According to a statement she submitted in court, her parents, who has lived in the US, was a former advisor to Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas president who was killed by Israel last year.
Her parents” started the House of Wisdom in 2011 to promote peace and conflict resolution in Gaza” in 2010, it adds.
When Ms. Saleh and Mr. Suri second met, they were no often conversing. However, a companion who accompanied him on the wagon claimed to the BBC that they reconnected a few months later.
Their wedding made headlines in India, as the couple moved back to Delhi and continued to live there for about eight years.
Ms. Saleh pursued a master’s degree in Jamia on her own, and she eventually worked at the Qatar ambassador. Mr. Suri relocated to the US in 2023, and Ms. Saleh followed him.
When he was detained, he was weeks away from finishing his fellowship.
The parents of Mr. Suri claimed it was painful for him to see his brother in this circumstance.
He claims that, aside from his marriage, he has no links to Hamas or Palestine. He claimed that his marriage to a Arab woman is a crime.
But he is optimistic that his brother won’t be taken to a deportation. These are basically claims, after all. There is no evidence of wrongdoing, he continued.