Attorney General Mahbubey Alam on Sunday said Dhaka would launch legal and diplomatic efforts to repatriate Chowdhury Mueen Uddin, a war crime accused now residing in Britain, reports Time of India quoting PTI.
The reaction came a day after Choudhury Muen Uddin in an interview with the Al Jazeera declined to appear before the International Crimes Tribunal saying “the tribunal in Bangladesh is a joke, it's a sham trial.”
“Choudhury Mueen Uddin himself is an accused who is wanted particularly for the systematic killings of top intellectuals just ahead of the December 16, 1971 victory against Pakistan. Don't you think it is natural on his part to make such claims about the trial," PTI quoted Mahbubey Alam as saying.
The attorney general said Mueen Uddin, a former journalist, and his fellow war crimes accused Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Khan would be tried in absentia if they could not be brought back.
“We know one of them [Mueen Uddin] is living in Britain and the other is in the US. We will do all we can to return them home to be exposed to justice," a foreign ministry spokesman, seeking anonymity, told PTI.
Mueen Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman were two leaders of the infamous al-Badr militia manned mostly by students of the radical Jamaat-e-Islami party which was opposed to Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan and they fled the country when Pakistani troops surrendered after their defeat in the war.
The prosecution lawyers said they had gathered specific evidence that Mueen Uddin played a crucial role in the massacre of intellectuals opposed to the Islamists on December 14, 1971 just before the war ended while archival media documents revealed that he had acted like a secret killer.
The ICT 22 on June 24 indicted Mueen Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman on 11 counts of "crimes against humanity" committed during the war.
The tribunals have already handed down death penalty to four top Jamaat leaders and life imprisonment to two others triggering violence across the country that claimed over 150 lives since the first sentence was awarded in January.