Colonial security trials target constructed figures, not individual defendants

Evidence

Yet, the Great Wahhabi Case was never really about Amir Khan, or if so, only marginally. The trial was a contest over the fate of the Phantom Wahhabi and its relationship to imperial ideologies of law, security, and control. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 180

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: a longform essay on how show trials are staged against imagined enemies rather than actual defendants, tracing the Phantom Wahhabi through to modern security prosecutions.