Staff Reporter :
More than a dozen Bangladeshi former top government officials arrested after a mass uprising in August have been charged with “enabling massacres” before a special tribunal which also told investigators they have one month to complete their work on former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Dozens of Hasina’s allies were taken into custody since her regime collapsed, accused of involvement in a police crackdown that killed more than 1,000 people during the unrest that led to her removal and exile to India.
The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has ordered its investigation agency to submit reports within one month in two cases filed against deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and 45 others over the killings and crimes against humanity committed during the July-August mass uprising.
The three-member tribunal, led by Justice Md Golam Mortuza Majumder, passed the order, said tribunal’s Chief Prosecutor Advocate Md Tajul Islam.
Besides, the court ordered the investigation agency to update it about the absconding accused and set December 17 for holding a hearing over the matter, he said.
Earlier in the morning, 13 accused, including nine former ministers of the ousted Awami League government, were produced before tribunal in cases over the killings during the student-led mass movement. ICT Chief Prosecutor Md Tajul Islam said they were produced before the tribunal after showing them arrested in cases over crimes against humanity.
All the accused are now behind the bars in other cases, he added.
Those who were produced before the tribunal were former Law Minister Anisul Huq, Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister Lieutenant Col (retired) Faruk Khan, Workers Party President Rashed Khan Menon, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal President Hasanul Haq Inu, former State Minister for Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak, former Prime Minister’s Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Adviser Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury.
Ex-minister Dr Dipu Moni, Hasina’s Adviser and businessman Salman F Rahman, former minister Kamal Ahmed Majumder, former minister Golam Dastagir Gazi, former Justice Shamsuddin Chowdhury Manik, former Home Secretary Jahangir Alam and former minister Dipu Moni were among them.
Prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam on Monday said “We have produced 13 defendants on Monday, including 11 former ministers, a bureaucrat, and a judge,” Islam, the chief prosecutor of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, told reporters. “They are complicit in enabling massacres by participating in planning, inciting violence, ordering law enforcement officers to shoot on sight, and obstructing efforts to prevent genocide.”
Hasina, who fled to New Delhi by helicopter on August 5, was also due in court in Dhaka on Monday to face charges of “massacres, killings, and crimes against humanity”, but she remained a fugitive in exile, with prosecutors repeating extradition demands for her, Al Jazeera reports.
Golam Mortuza Majumdar, the head judge of the three-member International Crimes Tribunal, set December 17 for investigators to finish their work. The deadline came after prosecutors sought more time for the investigation.
Hasina’s nearly 16-year tenure saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.
“The crimes that led to mass murders and genocide have occurred over the past 16 years across the country,” said Islam.
The tribunal’s chief prosecutor has already sought help from Interpol through the country’s police chief to arrest Hasina. India is a member of Interpol, but this does not mean New Delhi must hand Hasina over as each country applies their own laws on whether an arrest should be made.
On Sunday, interim leader and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus said his administration will seek her extradition from India – a request that could strain relations with a key regional ally, which maintained close ties with the removed leader throughout her time in power.
Yunus said as many as 3,500 people may have been abducted during Hasina’s “autocratic” rule.
Protests broke out across Bangladesh this summer after college students demanded the abolition of a controversial quota system in government jobs that they said favoured supporters of the governing party. Though Bangladesh’s top court scrapped the quota, the protests soon morphed into a wider call for Hasina’s removal from power.
The government’s response was one of the bloodiest chapters in Bangladesh’s history as security forces beat and fired tear gas and live ammunition on peaceful demonstrators, killing more than 1,000 people in three weeks and arresting thousands.
