A prosecution witness Monday testified that Abdul Alim, accused of war crimes, was responsible for the killing of his father and two uncles by the Pakistani army and their local collaborators, as Alim had refused to get them released from detention.
Mostafizur Rahman, son of martyr Ilias Uddin Sarder, told the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) 2 that Alim refused to help his family members as they were involved with the Liberation War.
Alim, a former member of President Ziaur Rahman’s cabinet, was indicted on 17 charges of crimes against humanity and genocide, reportedly committed during the 1971 Liberation War. Mostafizur, the 18th prosecution witness, also identified Alim as the “chief of the peace committee and razakar bahini of Jaipurhat” while narrating the detention and confinement of his father and others standing before the tribunal of justices Obaidul Hassan, Md Mozibur Rahman Miah and M Shahinur Islam.
Mostafizur, 58, said around 11am on May 26, 1971, Pakistani occupational forces, accompanied by peace committee members and razakars, came to his paternal uncle’s house.
Mostafizur, his father, uncles and two cousins, along with other villagers, managed to hide themselves in nearby bushes. After sometime, two Biharis, named Ahmed Kasai and Rashid, announced that the army would do them no harm and they had only come to form a peace committee.
Hearing the announcement, Mostafizur’s father, along with his uncles Yusuf Uddin Sarder and Yunus Uddin Sarder, returned to the house, where the Pakistani soldiers caught them.
His cousins, Mahbubur Rahman and Bazlar Rahman, followed the army to see where they were taken.
Mostafizur and his cousins then went to his maternal uncle, Abdul Quader Mondal, and informed him that his father and two uncles were detained at the Balighata Union Parishad, where the Pakistani army had set up a camp.
“After that, my cousin, Kashem Sarder, talked to three peace committee men, who suggested that he talk to Alim, as he was the senior leader of the committee. My cousin went to Alim, and requested him to get my father and uncles released,”Mostafizur said. “But Alim told my cousin that since my father and uncles were pro-liberation, they couldn’t be released.” “On that same day, around 6:30pm, we heard gunshots. During the war, the Pakistani army used to kill people at a place near our house, and we assumed that our family members were shot dead. After that, we fled to India and returned home after independence,” Mostafiz told the tribunal.
On returning from India, based on information collected, they went to one Kali Saha’s pond site, and exhumed the bodies of his father and uncles, and reburied them following funeral rituals, he added.
Proceedings in the case will continue today.
The ICT, widely known as “war crimes tribunal”, was established in 2009 to try those accused of war crimes during the Liberation War.
