The International Crimes Tribunal on Sunday lambasted the regimes of the country’s two military rulers Ziaur Rahman and HM Ershad as their administration had ensured safe passage for Chowdhury Mueen Uddin to visit the country.
Al-Badr leaders Mueen and Asharfuzzaman Khan disappeared immediately before the birth of Bangladesh. There was no public knowledge about their whereabouts for a long time. But through some writings and documentaries in the late 1980s and 90s information surfaced that Ashraf was living in the US and Mueen in the UK.
The two were handed down the death sentence by ICT 2 on Sunday for their role in planning and implementing the killings of intellectuals prior to the victory in the nine-month-long Liberation War on December 16, 1971.
The prosecution said Mueen, 65, first went to Pakistan and then to London and had since been there. He is the chairman of Tottenham Mosque and was the director of the Muslim Spiritual Care Provision in the National Health Service. He was also the chairman of the trustee board of an NGO named Muslim Aid. Ashraf, 65, now lives in New York, USA.
The verdict said it had been proved from the testimony of a 64-year-old prosecution witness named Shariatullah Bangali, a resident of the village adjacent to Mueen’s village Dagan Bhuiyan in Feni, that Mueen had visited his village twice under police protection during the regimes of Zia and Ershad.
Shariatullah saw Mueen in his village during an Eid when the local freedom fighters resisted his presence at the Eid prayer as he had been involved with intellectuals’ killing.
The verdict said a report of the Special Branch of Feni police confirmed that Mueen had visited his village by a vehicle of Pakistan High Commission in Bangladesh.
“It is indeed a great shame for the nation that the government [of Zia and Ershad] allowed Chowdhury Mueen Uddin who went into hiding and later on fled to abroad to visit his native village under police protection and protocol,” said the verdict.
“What a shame! What a shame!” the judges of the tribunal said. “Instead of being condemned, Chowdhury Mueen Uddin was rather honoured by state machineries.”
Tribunal Chairman Justice Obaidul Hassan and members Justice Md Mozibur Rahman Miah and Justice Md Shahinur Islam in their verdict said: “This fact indubitably shakes and debases the nation.
“It increases the trauma sustained by the victims’ family which caused a further attack to civilisation.”
The tribunal also heavily came down on Ershad’s regime as the second military dictator made Maulana Abdul Mannan, who was also involved with intellectual killing, a cabinet member. Manna helped al-Badr gang of Mueen and Ashraf in picking up physician Alim Chowdhury, who never came back.
The verdict said Mannan had “full knowledge about the common purpose and plan in execution of which al-Badr men abducted Dr Alim Chowdhury.”
Mannan was captured by some Dhaka dwellers and handed over to Ramna police station, but mysteriously police freed him.
The judges asked: “Why was Maulana Mannan set free by the police?
“Maulana Mannan could have been arrested and kept in custody immediately after independence to unearth the truth by identifying the perpetrators and individuals involved with planned annihilation.
“But he was allowed to walk free even after handing him over to police. Further, astonishingly this Maulana Mannan later became a member of military dictator HM Ershad’s cabinet.”
“What a shame for the nation!” said the verdict.
