The government is working on bringing back convicted Al-Badr leaders Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman Khan from the UK and the US, respectively.
“We are in touch with the countries where they are living,” foreign ministry spokesperson Seheli Sabrin said on Sunday while replying to a question, ahead of Martyred Intellectuals Day on December 14.
“Since it is a legal process, we cannot give out every detail. But we are working to bring them back,” she said.
The International Crimes Tribunal on November 3, 2013 convicted the two for abducting and killing 18 intellectuals, including nine teachers of Dhaka University, six journalists and three doctors, in the last days of Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971, sentencing them to death.
Neither the UK nor the US support capital punishment.
Bangladesh also does not have extradition treaties with the two countries.
The Jamaat-e-Islami and its affiliates collaborated with Pakistan during the war. Al-Badr was one of their forces.
Renowned filmmaker and Dhaka University teacher Prof Munier Chowdhury, Prof Mufazzal Haider Chaudhury, Dr Faizul Mohiuddin, journalists Selina Parvin, Shahidullah Kaiser, and physicians Md Fazle Rabbi and Alim Chowdhury were among the victims of the Al-Badr force.
