A prosecution witness, who used to be a member of Islami Chhatra Sangha of which Nizami was the chief in 1971, has given a first hand account of the mastermind’s role that the death row war criminal had played during the war.
Misbahur Rahman Chowdhury, now the chairman of a pro-Awami League faction of the Islami Oikya Jote, narrated in deposition before the International Crimes Tribunal how Nizami brained the formation of the al-Badr force that killed many intellectuals in 1971.
“In 1962, I used to go to the same school as Sirajul Islam Motlib, who became the president of Moulvibazar unit of Chhatra Sangha [Jamaat-e-Islami’s the then student front, now known as Chhatra Shibir]. He asked me to join the Pakistan Shahin Fouz and I did. At the same time, I also became a member of the Chhatra Sangha,” Misbah said.
“[Sometime] after March 25, 1971, Sirajul gave me a handwritten letter that addressed me as ‘brother Misbah.’ It read that the Chhatra Sangha had decided that all its members ought to join the al-Badr force by August 10...I was asked to meet Maj Fakhrul Islam, local commander of Pakistan Army in Moulvibazar, and collect my joining letter,” he narrated.
Placing the letter at the tribunal during deposition, Misbah continued: “The letter also read that Motiur Rahman Nizami, the then president of Chhatra Sangha, would be pleased if I joined the al-Badr force.” However, instead of joining the force, he left the country.
In his deposition, he also talked about a meeting in Saudi Arabia after the Liberation War in which he heard Razakar kingpin Ghulam Azam saying that freedom fighters had destroyed many mosques in Bangladesh.
According to Misbah, war criminal Ghulam Azam, who recently died in jail, raised many allegations in that meeting against people who supported Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971.
In the words of the prosecution witness: “Ghulam Azam said pro-liberation people had stopped Islamic education in the Madrassas. Holy Qur’an has become a rare thing to find and nobody recited it anymore.”
Ghulam alleged that freedom fighters had brutally killed around 40,000 people, who were involved in an “Islamic movement” with him, Misbah said.
He also said he had met an Islami Chhatra Sangha leader named Abdur Razzak in London and learned that he too was a member of the al-Badr force.
He is now better known as Barrister Abdur Razzak, leading legal counsel of the Jamaat leaders who are being tried or convicted for committing crimes against humanity in 1971.
Misbah said the members of Chhatra Sangha formed the al-Badr force in 1971 of which Nizami was the chief and another death row war criminal and Jamaat leader Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujaheed was the second in command.
The members of this organisation were trained up and equipped with arms by the Pakistan Army.
