Shahiduzzaman

The issue of the trial of war criminals and collaborators of the Pakistani occupation forces in the war of independence in 1971 was revived in 1992 with the trial of Golam Azam, then amir of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, in a people’s court (gana adalat) although the Bangladesh Collaborators (Special Tribunal) Order was repealed in 1975.
   Golam Azam, who was disqualified to be a Bangladesh citizen on April 18, 1973 along with 38 others for war crimes, returned to Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1978 and was appointed the leader of Jamaat in December 1991.
   His return and appointment as the Jamaat amir stirred widespread resentment and condemnation, and led to the formation of the Committee for Elimination of Killers and Collaborators of 1971, widely known as the Nirmul Committee, and the Committee for Implementation of the Spirit of the Liberation War in January 1992.
   The committees had one primary objective: to try Golam Azam in a people’s court on the charge of war crimes. On February 11, 1992, a coordination committee comprising members and component organisations of both the committees was formed. Besides those two committees, the National Coordination Committee for Restoration of the Spirit of the Liberation War and Elimination of Killers and Collaborators of 1971 also included 53 political parties and socio-cultural organisations. Political parties including the Awami League, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, both the factions of Bangladesher Samajtantrik Dal, Communist Party of Bangladesh, Workers Party of Bangladesh, Samyabadi Dal and Sramik Krishok Samajbadi Dal, and socio-cultural organisations including Muktijoddha Sangsad and Sammilito Sangskritik Jote were active parts of the national coordination committee.
   The national coordination committee organised the people’s court on March 26, 1992. The court found Golam Azam guilty of war crimes, including collaborating with Pakistani occupation forces during the war of independence, and sentenced him to death. As it did not have the authority to execute the sentence, the people’s court asked the government for execution of the sentence through an appropriate legal process.
   On February 19, 1993, the coordination committee instituted the National People’s Enquiry Commission to investigate charges of war crimes against Abbas Ali Khan, Matiur Rahman Nizami, Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, Kamaruzzaman, Maulana Mannan, Anwar Zahid, Muhammad Ayenuddin, Abdul Alim and others. The commission made its report public at a rally on March 26, 1995, on the second anniversary of the people’s court, and charged them all with war crimes. At the rally, the coordination committee urged the government to set up a special tribunal and try the war criminals under the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act 1973.
   The government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had enacted the law on July 19, 1973. Four days earlier, on July 15, 1973, the constitution was amended for the first time. The first amendment provided constitutional coverage for the act so that it would not be deemed unconstitutional because of inconsistency with the constitution. The government also appointed Supreme Court lawyers Sabita Ranjan Pal and Sirajul Haque as chief prosecutors, and Aminul Huq and Mahmudul Islam, both of whom later became attorney general, Ismail Uddin Sarkar, later a judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, and Abdul Wadud Bhuiyan, who was later made an additional attorney general, as special prosecutors. Nurul Islam, then deputy inspector general of police, was made the chief investigator of the cases under the act. The appointments were made in April 1972 when the act was in the process of being enacted.
   No tribunal has been formed so far nor any cases filed nor any investigation launched under the international crimes act — not even after the Awami League came to power in June 1996. The party, which was a major player in the coordination committee and which virtually made the movement against the anti-liberation collaborators launched by the committee its own, did not take any initiative to try the war criminals by a special tribunal during its five-year tenure.
   Professor Farida Banu filed a case on September 24, 1997 against Chowdhury Mainuddin and Ashrafuzzaman, supposedly members of Al-Badr, for the killing of her brother Professor Giasuddin on December 14, 1971. The private initiative opened a new chapter in the move for trials of anti-liberation collaborators. The case, however, got lost in the law ministry during the tenure of the government of Sheikh Hasina on the question of the formation of a tribunal under the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, 1973.
   The Criminal Investigation Department had, meanwhile, done intensive investigations on the basis of the case papers. It talked to the families of the martyred teachers and students of Dhaka University and other educational institutions. The investigators also watched the British Channel 4 programme, War Crimes File, in the hope of getting more leads on the case.
   The CID eventually named 40 persons as witnesses. According to the witnesses, Mainuddin, a journalist of the then Pakistan Observer, and Ashrafuzzaman, a student of Dhaka University, picked up eight university teachers on December 14. The investigation officer of the case, senior assistant superintendent Munshi Atiqur Rahman, told New Age on December 3, 2005, ‘We did a primary investigation and sent a file with our observations to the home ministry. The file was sent to the law ministry and I don’t know what happened to it later.’
   In the file, the department recommended the formation of a tribunal and investigation of the case under the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act as the late Sirajul Haque, who was appointed the chief prosecutor in the case against the collaborators in 1972, observed that the case should be conducted under the act and that such a case would not be effective under existing criminal laws, recalled Munshi Atiq.
   The home ministry sent the file to the law ministry for its opinion in January 2000. It never came back as the Awami League government did not care much about the case in the remaining 18 months of its tenure. The then law minister Abdul Matin Khasru neither confirmed nor denied seeing the file. He told New Age he ‘could not recall’ any such matter.
   The incumbent law minister, Moudud Ahmed, who was a member of the Buddhijibi Nidhan Tathyanushandhan Committee, told New Age on December 5 that he was not aware of the file. The solicitor wing and the opinion wing of the ministry could not trace any such file.
   Home ministry officials also said they knew nothing about the issue.