The trial went on for 14 months until finally the International Crimes Tribunal came down with a 90 year jail sentence for Ghulam Azam, the former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, who “masterminded” the murder of 3 million Bangalees during the 1971 Liberation War.
Over these 14 months, the razakar kingpin, who has been, for the most part, been living at the BSMMU prison cell and always appeared at the court on a wheelchair, has never been kept inside the courtroom for more than an hour.
Monday, on the judgment day, the 91-year old war criminal had to stay inside the court room for four hours during which the tribunal read out the 75-page long summary verdict.
At the outset, the former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, a party that the tribunal has often associated with war crimes, looked calm and composed. Clad in a snow white Panjabi, a blue-stripped lungi, an Islamic cap and an off-white slipper, Ghulam Azam looked like he was in control as he was produced in the courtroom at around 10:40am, minutes before the judges entered.
Before the judges started reading the verdict, his son Abdullahill Aman Azmi, a dismissed army person, advised him: “You just keep quiet. We will take care of everything.”
Azmi, Azam’s personal assistant Shahad, his grandson Hamza and another man sat on the sofa, only a few feet away from the dock that caged the former Jamaat chief.
“What a tribunal!” Azmi muttered when Justice Anwarul Hoque was giving the accounts of Ghulam Azam’s meeting with General Tikka Khan, alias the “butcher of Bengal.”
This correspondent, who was keeping a close watch, noticed a computer composed paper in Azmi’s hands titled “The reaction on the outcome of Professor Ghulam Azam’s Trial” and containing expressions like “not just,” “politically motivated” and “revenge.”
As the verdict was being read, Azmi or Hamza could be seen asking Azam how he was feeling.
‘Liable of superior responsibility of the auxiliary forces’
At 11:42am Azmi went to his father and asked: “Are you feeling bad?”
“No,” was Ghulam Azam’s reply.
‘The defence arguments were not sustainable’
Suddenly, Azam was taken over by a fit of incessant cough.
‘Guilty of the charges’
At 1:08pm, chief of the panel Justice ATM Fazle Kabir took the floor to announce the conclusion of the judgment. He summed up that Ghulam Azam was guilty of the charges raised by the prosecution.
Minutes later, the Jamaat guru called his son and said: “[I am] feeling very bad.”
Azmi sent a chit which that read “PGA [Professor Ghulam Azam] feeling very bad” to the defence lawyers who were sitting in front of the judges. But the lawyers did not put forward the demand to move Ghulam Azam away from the court.
He then asked an on-duty policeman to take the matter to the judges. The policeman replied in the negative as well.
“Chickens!” was Azmi’s observation.
‘Consecutively or till his death’
Ghulam Azam looked very upset and so was his son when Justice Kabir was pronouncing the punishment for each of the crimes.
When the justice finished, the game turned on its head. Azmi and others relaxed comfortably back on the sofa as the justice finished by handing Azam 30 years in jail for the murder of 38 people, the last of the charges.
“This judgment is against justice and politically motivated,” Azmi told reporters in an exalted voice, with a rise smile on his face.
The razakar mastermind also looked relieved when he was being brought to the custody on the ground floor of tribunal building.
The public outcry outside the court premises, which protested the verdict, looked ridiculous to Azmi: “They are fighting among themselves.”
Hamza then appeared in front of the journalists and commented that “the judgment was fair.”
Suddenly, 1981 came back.
The angry activists of the Bangladesh Muktijoddha Sangsad started beating him shouting “bloody son of the Razakars.”
Hamza somehow managed to escape the public wrath.
In 1981, on his return from Pakistan in 1978 and his first public appearance since, Ghulam Azam went to the Baitul Mokarram Mosque to attend a Gayebana Janaza of some Palestinians, who were killed by Israel.
The angry mob beat up the Jamaat guru with shoes for his anti-liberation role.
The grandson relieved the grandfather’s experiences.
