When condemned killer of martyred intellectuals Chowdhury Mueen Uddin, an al-Badr leader still fugitive in the eyes of law, is making audacious comments on the media over the war crimes trial process, the government has no visible initiatives to bring him back to execute the verdict delivered around one and a half months ago.
Now the victims’ families are doubtful whether the government has any such plan.
However, a senior official of the foreign ministry said: “Certainly some steps have been taken.” He, however, declined to elaborate on the issue.
After 42 years of the systematic abduction and killing of hundreds of intellectuals on the eve of independence, a tribunal last month awarded Mueen and another al-Badr leader Ashrafuzzaman Khan death penalty for masterminding the crimes.
Since the trial began, none of the duo appeared at the tribunal, and so it was held in absentia. Even though it is believed that Ashraf was living in the US, the law enforcers could not confirm his whereabouts. Meanwhile, the convict did not make any media statement ever.
However, when Mueen is treated as a fugitive by the court, he has continued to make remarks about the trial process – since his implication in the war crimes case until the conviction.
Mueen has more than one website where he defends himself to be “innocent.” Of those, one website is particularly dedicated for giving explanation and responding to the war crimes allegations. Mueen is assisted by his counsel Toby M Cadman. Dr Nusrat Rabbee, daughter of martyred intellectual Dr Mohammed Fazle Rabbee, said the Bangladesh government needed to engage with the US and the UK governments at diplomatic-level for extradition of the convicted war criminals.
She said the war criminals had hired prominent attorneys to coach them how to use the right “human rights” language effectively and express arrogance to deride and undermine the legal procedure followed in Bangladesh.
“Bangladesh needs to hire human rights lawyers to counter these falsehoods with the aim of extradition of these killers,” said Nusrat, a biostatistician and faculty member at University of California, Berkeley.
In a website, Mueen claimed that he had been prepared to face the trial and prove his innocence before a court which is “fully independent and impartial.” He advocated for establishment of an internationally-supervised process through meeting international standard which is credible and affords accused persons a fair trial.
Earlier, in an interview with the Al Jazeera television on July 20, the former al-Badr leader termed the ongoing war trials “sham” and “joke,” and labelled the tribunal a “kangaroo court.” He said he would never appear before it. The tribunal in its observation said Mueen’s remarks were “audacious” and “disparaging,” and that his activities proved that he had a “guilty mind.”
The comments came only four days after the tribunal had begun hearing on the case against him. The prosecution brought on 11 charges of wartime offences, including the killing of 18 intellectuals between December 11 and 15, 1971.
After the verdict, Mueen uploaded a statement on his website through his counsel which said: “The Government of Bangladesh has persistently declared that it intends to seek the extradition of Mueen Uddin...It decided instead to try Mueen Uddin in his absence without attempting to seek his extradition and without even attempting to contact his legal team. It has clearly demonstrated that it has no intention to follow norms of due process and instead seeks a sensationalist victory.”
The prosecution terms the statement false as the tribunal followed every legal step before starting the trial in absentia. As per law, the tribunal ordered its registrar office to publish advertisements in two newspapers asking Mueen and Ashraf to appear before it within 10 days from the date of publication.
In every interview, Mueen admitted that he had been a member of Islami Chhatra Sangha, then students’ wing of Jamaat, but denied his involvement with paramilitary force al-Badr, which has been blamed for atrocities including the killing of intellectuals. Al-Badr was formed mainly with the members of Chhatra Sangha.
Prosecutor Tureen Afroz told the Dhaka Tribune that Mueen had claimed in many interviews published on international media that he resigned from Chhatra Sangha after the military crackdown on March 25, 1971. “If so, then why is he still fugitive?”
She hoped that repatriation of the convicts was possible “if we can employ an active lobbyist group and carry out the activities with strong diplomacy.”
Earlier, the tribunal convicted absconding war criminal Abul Kalam Azad, an expelled Jamaat member known as Bachchu Razakar. No one knows his whereabouts. Latest on October 9, a tribunal indicted Zahid Hossain alias Khokon Razakar for crimes against humanity. He is now believed to be in Sweden.
