News
Sikh separatist, targeted once for assassination, says India still trying to kill him
Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun stands for a photograph in New York City on Oct. 25.
Jeenah Moon for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jeenah Moon for NPR
It is a phone call Gurpatwant Singh Pannun remembers well. It was June 17, 2023. After playing phone tag for a day, he and his close aide in Canada finally managed to connect.
“He told me that he was informed by the Canadian intelligence officials that there is a serious threat to his life and he might be killed,” Pannun recalled.
On that call, his aide, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, said that assassins were coming for Pannun as well. The conversation is seared into Pannun’s memory because of what Nijjar told him — but also because it was the last time the two men spoke.
The following day, gunmen shot Nijjar dead in the parking lot of a Sikh temple outside Vancouver, Canada. Canadian authorities have arrested four Indian nationals in connection with the murder.
Nijjar’s warning for Pannun, a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen, also proved prescient. Five months later, the U.S. Justice Department announced it had foiled a plot to assassinate Pannun in New York City. An Indian national was charged in the alleged murder-for-hire scheme, and has pleaded not guilty.
Nijjar’s killing and the purported plan to assassinate Pannun are part of a broader trend around the world in which foreign governments seek to silence critics overseas, including in the United States.
Last week, prosecutors announced charges against a new defendant in Pannun’s case: a former Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, who allegedly orchestrated the plot.
In the last few years, the Justice Department says it has foiled at least four assassination plots tied to a foreign power. Three of those allegedly link back to Iran, including one targeting Iranian-American activist and journalist Masih Alinejad. The fourth — allegedly targeting Pannun — involves India.
The Indian government denies any involvement in Nijjar’s killing or the purported plot against Pannun.
After the U.S. announced charges in the Pannun case, India set up its own internal inquiry to investigate. Just over a week ago, Indian officials were in Washington for meetings to discuss the case and for both sides to provide an update on their respective investigations.
The State Department called the meetings “productive.” The Indian Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
“Well-documented” threats from India
Pannun, who was born in India but moved to the U.S. in 1992, told NPR earlier this year that the threat to his life came as no surprise.
“I have been threatened directly by the Indian parliamentarians while sitting in the Indian parliament,” he said. “They have stated that we are going to kill Pannun, even if we have to do a surgical strike. These are well-documented, the statements of the government officials.”
In particular, he points to remarks Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made several times in recent years, including early this July in India’s parliament.
“Today, post 2014, India enters your home and kills you,” Modi said before lawmakers. “Carries out surgical strikes. Carries out air strikes.”
In Pannun’s view, Modi’s threat about how India deals with its perceived enemies is directed at people like him.
Pannun is a Sikh separatist. He is a leading figure in the Khalistan movement, which wants to create an independent Sikh homeland carved out from northern India. He and his organization, Sikhs for Justice, have been spearheading a global referendum for independence.
Khalistan referendum campaign
Pannun is a practicing attorney. At his law office in Queens, boxes of case files and legal books lined the walls. His legal work pays the bills, but much of his time he dedicates to the Khalistan cause.
Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun stands for a photograph in New York City on Oct. 25.
Jeenah Moon for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jeenah Moon for NPR
In his office, he has a green screen set up and camera for the videos he produces and posts online for the campaign.
Behind his desk hung a yellow and blue Khalistan flag. On the wall was a framed picture of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, the holiest site in Sikhism.
Pannun and Nijjar first worked together to document the events surrounding the Indian military’s attack on the temple in 1984, known as Operation Blue Star, and the government’s bloody, nearly decade-long effort to stamp out an armed Sikh insurgency fighting for independence. Thousands were killed.
The two men then shifted their focus to the future and started the Khalistan referendum campaign. The idea is to have Sikhs around the world vote on the question of creating an independent Sikh state. It is an unofficial referendum, and not legally binding.
Pannun has dedicated his life to the campaign. He told his family years ago that his advocacy work would put him at odds with India’s government.
“I have told them very clearly what it would entail and where it can lead,” he said. “That’s why when we are talking about assassination attempts and killings and threats, that doesn’t come as a surprise to us. That doesn’t come as a surprise to the family.”
“Survive to the finish line”
The Modi government in 2020 designated Pannun and Nijjar terrorists for their separatist work.
Pannun rejects the allegation. He said he follows the law, and that his campaign is a peaceful, democratic process.
India’s response, he said, has been to come after him, and that has forced him to look over his shoulder.
“That’s how I’m going to survive to the finish line,” he said.
The alleged assassination plot was not a one-off. He said there are active threats against his life right now. That danger has not forced him to end his separatist work, but it has forced him to take precautions.
At his office, a security team screens visitors with a metal detector. Body guards ferry him to and from work. He had security before the alleged plot, he said, but he’s beefed it up since the case was charged last year.
“Today, what you see is very, very obvious,” he said of his security detail. “This is a message that I’m giving that I’m not out there to do it in suicide mode. I’m going to continue to campaign and I’m going to continue to protect myself.”
Still, the threat on his life has altered, to a degree, how he operates. The interview with NPR was in his office, in part, because it is secure.
“I cannot just abruptly take a car and jump in the car and go anywhere,” he said. “That’s what I have been advised by my security details. That’s where you get killed.”
He’s changed his residence several times since the alleged plot was foiled. He doesn’t go to restaurants much. He said he hasn’t been to the grocery store in years; he gets things delivered instead. And he’s curtailed his on-the-ground campaign appearances.
Boycotting Indian-owned businesses
He remains very active online, though, and regularly posts videos on Instagram. Some of them show pro-Khalistan rallies, while others offer heated challenges against India or Indian officials.
In one from last November, Pannun declares: “Sikhs are facing existential threat under the successive India regimes.”
“We are going to target India,” he adds. “From Air India to made in India, we are going to ground everything.”
Some Indian media outlets interpreted that as a threat in light of the 1985 bombing of an Air India passenger jet flying from Canada to India that killed more than 300 people. A Canadian Sikh was found guilty in 2003 for involvement in the bombing. A Canadian court acquitted two others.
Pannun pushed back, calling that interpretation of his video an “Indian narrative,” and saying he was calling for a Sikh boycott of Indian-owned businesses.
“The objective behind it is that I want the (Sikh) community to stop funding their own genocide,” he said. “I want the community not to spend a dime on Indian-owned businesses.”
Breaking up the Indian state
He’s also come under criticism over posters with the words “Kill India” and the names and photos of Indian officials that the placards claim were involved in Nijjar’s killing. One of the officials pictured was Sanjay Kumar Verma, India’s high commissioner, who was among the six Indian diplomats recently expelled from Canada.
Pannun said his goal is to break up the Indian state.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun stands for a portrait in New York City.
Jeenah Moon for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jeenah Moon for NPR
“I say to kill Modi politics. We are in America. We say ‘kill Biden politics,’ we say ‘kill Trump politics,’” Pannun said. “’Kill India’ means balkanize India. India is not a human being. India is in a union of states. We want to balkanize India.”
Some of his posts on social media are about his late colleague and friend, Nijjar. His assassination, Pannun said, has left a hole.
“You feel the vacuum, but then you also get the strength and the courage: what Nijjar stood for, for what he gave his life, for what he has spent the last 15, 16 years with us,” he said.
But Pannun also said there’s no time to sit back and grieve. There is work to be done, a campaign to run, despite the risks.
“I would rather take a bullet in my head than stop the Khalistan referendum campaign,” he said.
When Stuart Sepulvida arrives at St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Parish in Tucson, Ariz., for Mass, which he attends most mornings, he passes a display honoring local soldiers and encouraging parishioners to pray for their safety. Hundreds of small cards record their names: Robles, Arenas, Grajeda. A portrait of Pope Leo XIV hangs across the lobby.
Mr. Sepulvida, 81, is a Vietnam veteran whose patriotism and Catholicism are deeply intertwined. He voted for President Trump three times but has never felt more betrayed by an American president than when Mr. Trump denounced Pope Leo as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.”
“It was very disturbing to me to hear both of them clashing like they did,” Mr. Sepulvida said, standing outside the church one morning this week. Now, he is reconsidering whether he will vote Republican this year.
The Republican Party is struggling to hold onto the support from Hispanic voters who helped propel Mr. Trump back into the White House in 2024. Yet as many party leaders have acknowledged the urgent need to stop the backsliding among Latinos, the president has enraged many of even his strongest supporters by clashing with the pope.
On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo, the first U.S.-born pontiff, spoke of the need to “abandon every desire for conflict, domination and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars.” Within days, Mr. Trump, who has led the United States into a war with Iran, said the pope was “catering to the radical left” and posted an AI-generated image portraying himself as a Jesus figure. Mr. Trump later deleted the image, saying he thought it depicted him as a doctor.
“It just isn’t what a president should do,” Mr. Sepulvida said. “The pope speaks for his people. He is beyond politics.”
Mr. Trump won 55 percent of Catholic voters in the 2024 election, compared to 43 percent who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to Pew Research Center. The most sizable gains came from Hispanic Catholics. While Joseph R. Biden Jr. won their votes by a 35-point margin in 2020, the Democratic advantage shrunk to 17 points in 2024. Now, just 18 percent of Hispanic Catholics said they support most or all of President Trump’s agenda, according to a poll from Pew released earlier this year.
If the president’s quarrel with the pope sours more Latinos on the Republican Party, it could affect midterm races across the country, including in South Florida and South Texas, where Republicans have notched important victories in predominantly Hispanic districts in recent years.
In Arizona’s Sixth Congressional District, which stretches from north of Tucson to the Mexican border, voters were still grappling with the fallout this week.
The district is roughly evenly divided among Republicans, Democrats and independent voters. Nearly a third of the district is Hispanic, and there is a significant population of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as a large Catholic community with deep history in the region. It also has one of largest numbers of military veterans of all congressional districts in the country.
“The president is looking for a lot of attention from everything,” said Maria Ramos, 60, who regularly attends weekday Mass at St. Francis. A registered independent, she usually votes for Democrats but often declines to cast a ballot if she views a candidate as too liberal. “He believes he can put God in his place. He’s meddling in countries that he’s not in control of — he wants to control the world.”
“It is not just a very serious lack of respect — it is a mortal sin,” she said, shaking her head. One word comes to her mind again and again, she said: disgust.
Like so many others in southern Arizona, Ms. Ramos has several relatives who serve in the military — a path they saw to both serve the country and as an entry into the stable middle class. Many of them, she said, voted for Mr. Trump for president.
The Tucson district is now widely seen as one of the most competitive in the country. Republican Juan Ciscomani narrowly won the district in 2022, in part by emphasizing his biography as a Mexican immigrant and a devoted father of six children. He is also an evangelical Christian, a group that has driven much of the growth among Hispanic Republican voters in recent years.
Mr. Ciscomani declined a request for an interview, but when a local radio host asked Mr. Ciscomani what he thought of Mr. Trump’s comments “as a man of faith,” the congressman declined to criticize the president but said, “You can trust that you won’t see any meme like that coming out of my account.”
JoAnna Mendoza, the Democrat challenging Mr. Ciscomani this fall, has made her 20-year career in the U.S. Navy and Marines a key aspect of her story on the campaign trail. While she rarely speaks about her religious background and no longer considers herself a practicing Catholic, she said she briefly considered becoming a nun as a teenager. She criticized Mr. Ciscomani for not condemning the president’s remarks.
“You can’t make faith a central part of your campaign and then allow this to stand,” she said in an interview.
Across Tucson, Latino Catholics, regardless of their past voting preferences, were similarly quick to condemn the president’s remarks.
When Cecilia Taisipic, 71, heard about it, she said, she winced with shame about her vote for him in 2024.
“I thought he would make the country better, but apparently it’s the opposite,” she said as she left Mass at St. Francis earlier this week. She is so fed up with politics, she said, that she is unlikely to vote at all this year. “When it comes to my faith, I don’t like anybody to challenge it. Now I don’t want to hear anything on the news. I just want to pray.”
Matilde Robinson Bours, 63, teaches a weekly Spanish Bible study class at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish, and like nearly all of the women in her class, she immigrated from Mexico decades ago. She has voted for Republicans in nearly every election since she became a citizen. Though she has never liked President Trump, she said, his comments about the pope enraged her more than anything else he has said or done in the past.
“This surpassed everything, every social and political norm — this is personal to all Catholics,” she said. “The arrogance and ego is disgusting. To think that he is God? The pope has every right and responsibility to talk about peace.”
Still, Ms. Robinson Bours said, nothing will stop her from supporting Republicans again this year. She has been delighted that her adult children have stopped supporting Democrats in recent elections.
“Almost everyone I know thinks the way I do,” she said.
Patricia Martinez, 86, who has attended the same Bible study as Ms. Robinson Bours for years, shook her head in disagreement. She said she cannot imagine voting for a Republican who supports Mr. Trump.
“This is different — this shows he is out of his mind,” said Ms. Martinez. “We have to have basic respect and teach that to people in this country.”
Patrick Robles, a 24-year-old native of Tucson, spent years alienated from the Roman Catholic Church, but returned to his faith more recently. “The craziness of the world sort of caused me to seek some sort of answers,” he said. Now, he attends Mass at the St. Augustine Cathedral in downtown Tucson, a few blocks from the office where he works as an aide to Representative Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat.
Mr. Robles said he saw Mr. Trump’s battle with the pope as both a personal affront and a political opportunity.
“The president is basically trying to draw a line between Catholics and what we perceive to be patriotism,” he said. “I believe we can be both.”
Last week, he texted one of his uncles who has supported Mr. Trump in every election asking him what he thought.
“I’m afraid we need divine intervention,” the uncle replied.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., takes questions at a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Speaker Mike Johnson, R.-La., is forging ahead with his latest proposal to renew a key American spy power. His bill, revealed Thursday, is largely unchanged from a previous plan which failed in a series of overnight votes earlier this month.
The program at center of the debate, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), is set to expire on April 30.
FISA 702 allows U.S. intelligence agencies to intercept the electronic communications of foreign nationals located outside of the United States. Some of the nearly 350,000 foreign targets whose communications are collected under the provision are in touch with Americans, whose calls, texts and emails could end up in the trove of information available to the federal government for review.
For almost two decades, privacy-minded lawmakers from both parties have sought to require specific court approval before federal law enforcement can conduct a targeted review of an American’s information gathered through the program. The lack of any such warrant requirement helped sink an effort last week to extend the program for 18 months, as well as a separate vote on a five-year renewal.
Trump officials, like those in past administrations, have argued that such a warrant requirement would overburden law enforcement and endanger national security. Johnson’s latest proposal would reauthorize the program for three years, but does not include a warrant requirement. Instead, the bill calls for the FBI to submit monthly explanations for reviews of Americans’ information to an oversight official as well as criminal penalties for willful abuse, among other tweaks.
“I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country,” the president wrote on Truth Social last week, advocating for the program to be extended without changes. “I have spoken with many in our Military who say FISA is necessary in order to protect our Troops overseas, as well as our people here at home, from the threat of Foreign Terror Attacks. It has already prevented MANY such Attacks, and it is very important that it remain in full force and effect.”
Glenn Gerstell, who served as general counsel at the National Security Agency during the Obama and first Trump administration, says Johnson’s reforms look like an attempt to find a middle ground.
“There’s not a lot of really substantive changes to the statute, but some gestures are made to people who are worried about privacy and civil liberties,” Gerstell said. “It seems like a pretty reasonable compromise that is going to be satisfactory to the national security agencies and yet at the same time represents some gesture to the privacy advocates.”
“This is not a reform bill and it’s not a compromise,” Elizabeth Goitein, a privacy advocate and senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, wrote on X. “It’s a straight reauthorization with eight pages of words that serve no serious purpose other than to try to convince members that it’s NOT a straight reauthorization.”
A bipartisan reform deal is still out of reach
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, told NPR on Wednesday, before the release of Johnson’s new proposal, that lawmakers were working on a bipartisan solution. He said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., was in touch with Johnson on the issue.
“There’s a lot of work being done here,” Himes said. “We’re sort of working out a process that will be inclusive rather than exclusive.” Himes said he was negotiating with Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and constitutional law scholar, on a reform proposal they hoped could preserve and reform the program — reauthorizing it with bipartisan support.
But Johnson’s new bill appears to fall short of the inclusive approach Himes hoped for.
NPR obtained a memo written by Raskin to his colleagues urging them to oppose the bill, which he said “continues the disastrous policy of trusting the FBI to self-police and self-report its abuses of Section 702 and backdoor searches of Americans’ data.”
“FBI agents can still collect, search, and review Americans’ communications without any review from a judge,” Raskin wrote.
FBI agents must receive annual training on FISA and are generally barred from searching for information about people in the U.S. if the goal of the search is to investigate general criminal activity, rather than find foreign intelligence information, and those searches need approval from a supervisor or an attorney.
Republican hardliners — who sunk Johnson’s last reauthorization attempt — also don’t all appear to be on board for Johnson’s latest revision. Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, a past chair of the Freedom Caucus, said “we’re not there yet” in a video he shared to X on Thursday.
“I didn’t take an oath to defend FISA, I didn’t take an oath to defend the intelligence community,” Perry said. “We can’t have them spying on American citizens and, when they do, there has to be accountability and I haven’t seen any that I’m satisfied with yet.”
The House Rules committee meets Monday morning, the first step toward advancing the renewal bill toward a vote.
President Trump announced a three-week extension of a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon that had been set to expire in a few days, after hosting a meeting between Israeli and Lebanese diplomats at the White House on Thursday.
Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that has been attacking Israel from southern Lebanon, did not have representatives at the meeting and did not immediately comment on the announcement. The prime minister of Israel and the president of Lebanon also did not comment.
A successful peace agreement would hinge upon Hezbollah halting attacks, which Lebanon’s government has little power to enforce because it does not control the militia. Lebanon’s military has mostly stayed out of the fighting and is not at war with Israel.
The cease-fire, which was scheduled to end on April 26, would last until May 17 if it takes effect as Mr. Trump described it. Before the cease-fire was brokered last week, nearly 2,300 people were killed in Lebanon and 13 in Israel. Since then, the number of Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah attacks have been dramatically reduced, though the two sides have continued exchanging fire.
The Lebanese Ambassador to the United States, Nada Hamadeh, credited Mr. Trump for extending the cease-fire, saying that “with your help and support, we can make Lebanon great again.” Mr. Trump replied, “I like that phrase, it’s a good phrase.”
Asked about the potential of a lasting peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon, Mr. Trump said that “I think there’s a great chance. They are friends about the same things and they are enemies on the same things.”
But Lebanon and Israel have periodically been at war since Israel’s founding in 1948. Israel has invaded Lebanon for the fifth time since 1978, incursions that have destabilized the country and the delicate balance of power between Muslim, Christian and Druze communities.
In the hours before the president’s announcement on social media, Israel and Hezbollah were trading attacks in southern Lebanon, testing the existing cease-fire.
Mr. Trump said the meeting at the White House had been attended by high-ranking U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the U.S. ambassadors to Israel and Lebanon.
Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli strike near the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh killed three people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Hezbollah claimed three separate attacks on Israeli troops who are occupying southern Lebanon, though none were wounded or killed.
Hezbollah set off the latest round of fighting last month by attacking Israel soon after the start of the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran. Israel responded to Hezbollah’s attacks by launching airstrikes across Lebanon and widening a ground invasion of the country’s south.
-
New York35 seconds agoHistory of Domestic Abuse Can be Considered in Sentencing, Court Rules
-
Detroit, MI31 minutes agoDetroit Tigers vs Cincinnati Reds – April 24, 2026 – Redleg Nation
-
San Francisco, CA43 minutes agoSan Francisco ranks top in the U.S. for desserts. Here’s where to go.
-
Dallas, TX49 minutes agoFC Dallas Injury Report vs. Seattle Sounders: Who Is In and Who Is Out?
-
Miami, FL55 minutes ago‘The Mummy’ New Movie To Open in 2027, ‘Miami ’85’ Now 2028
-
Boston, MA1 hour agoAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins Boston Mayor Wu, Ayanna Pressley to slam Trump’s childcare funding cuts
-
Denver, CO1 hour agoDenver police still looking for help solving double murder at American Elm restaurant 3 years ago
-
Seattle, WA1 hour agoTraffic flagger, 70, hospitalized after dump truck strike on Seattle’s Capitol Hill