Confessions in colonial sedition trials were often produced by torture and pardon deals

Evidence

The historical record of the case-including police investigations, trial proceedings, personal correspondence, and newspaper coverage-presents the raw material for an almost novelistic narrative, replete with eccentric characters and strange plot twists. Yet the evidence presented in court was, according to accounts published by convicted Wahhabis, the product of judicial torture and offers of pardon in exchange for evidence incriminating others. The government’s case against the Khan brothers was so weak that subsequent histories of the movement have assigned them, at best, a very minor role. In this paper, therefore, I pursue another character 1 Nineteenth-century writers used numerous transliterations of Wahhabi, including Wahabi, Wahabee, and Wahhaby. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 15

Categorization

• QUESTION: How far can convicted Wahhabis’ own published accounts be trusted as evidence of torture? Whose testimony is admissible and for what?
• XREF: Echoes the broader historiography on confessions under coercion (torture-produced evidence in colonial and modern counterinsurgency courts).