Portugal keen to see how India's treating Abu Salem in jail

MUMBAI: Portugal is keen to visit India to assess gangster Abu Salem's incarceration in India following his conviction for a builder's murder and involvement in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts.
The Portuguese want to check if the conditions laid down for Salem's extradition are being honoured by India. New Delhi had agreed not to give him the death penalty or a prison sentence of more than 25 years.His convictions carry a life sentence.
Salem's lawyer in Lisbon, Manuel Luis Ferreira, on Monday sent a letter to Portugal's minister of foreign affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, expressing his desire to be with the delegation on their India visit. The letter, which mentions that Salem is in a high-security cell at Taloja jail, Navi Mumbai, was also sent to the Portuguese ambassador.
Ferreira wrote he wanted to hear his client and to ensure he had proper local representation, and asked the minister if a date for the visit could be notified. Salem was apprehended in Chelas, a neighbourhood of Lisbon, in November 2002, and extradited in November 2005 to face criminal trials in India.
Last January, when the 1993 serial blasts trial was still on in Mumbai, Salem had filed a case before the European Court of Human Rights seeking a return to Portugal. In a plea made through his lawyer Taraq Sayed, Salem alleged that his trial in India had been rendered illegal as the court of appeal in Portugal had in 2014 validated the termination of his extradition order.