Khan

I. Background

According to his credible testimony, Khan was born in Kashmir and is a citizen of India. He has been involved in the Kashmiri independence movement since about 1967. Begin- ning in the early 1970s, Khan worked with the Jammu Kash- mir Liberation Front (“JKLF”), a group dedicated to the establishment of an independent Kashmir, though he was never officially a member of the JKLF.

The JKLF had both militant and political factions that, until approximately 1994, were part of the same organization. According to Khan, the two factions operated separately but were “wings of the same organization.” In about 1994, the two factions split into different organizations when half of the JKLF renounced violence. Before the split, the political wing of the organization advocated nonviolently for an independent Kashmir, while the militant wing operated an armed insur- gency against the Indian government in Kashmir. The militant wing took part in killings of politicians, the kidnaping of the daughter of the Indian Home Minister, and repeated attacks on the Indian Army, including attacks on military convoys.

Khan testified that he was affiliated with only the political wing of the…