Imrana Jalal on departure blacklist September 7, 2007

Prominent human rights lawyer Patricia Imrana Jalal was prevented from leaving the country last week despite holding a diplomatic passport, Dateline Dispatch can confirm.

Jalal was to have boarded a flight to Tonga on August 27 but was stopped at immigration in Nadi.

Jalal has been an outspoken critic of the military junta. She serves as a human rights advisor to the United Nations Development Program and as a member of the International Commission of Jurists, a body of sixty eminent judges and lawyers, to which she was elected in May 2006.

She is the Human Rights Adviser at the Pacific Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT) in Suva.

Jalal was travelling on a United Nations diplomatic passport. UN officials negotiated with representatives of the military-led regime and she was allowed to fly out the next day.