Black_cats
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2010
- Messages
- 10,031
- Reaction score
- -5
Bangladesh seeks extradition treaty with U.K.; will try to bring back Mujib's killers from U.S., Canada
August 14, 2023 01:38 pm | Updated 10:16 pm IST - KolkataLaw, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anisul Huq said Bangladesh is also trying to bring back two of the fugitive Army officers who were involved in shooting dead the country’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and members of his family
PTIBangladesh has sought an extradition treaty with the British government, weeks after a court in the South Asian nation sentenced fugitive BNP leader Tarique Rahman in a money laundering case, the neighbouring country’s Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anisul Huq said.
In an exclusive interview with PTI, Mr. Huq said Bangladesh is also trying to bring back two of the fugitive Army officers who were involved in shooting dead the country’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and members of his family in cold blood at their Dhaka house on August 15, 1975.
“We have held talks with the British High Commissioner to Dhaka and sought an extradition treaty. The British government is expected to revert back to our request,” said Mr. Huq, who was in Kolkata for a G-20 ministerial meeting on anti-corruption.
An extradition treaty allows countries to send back fugitives from justice to each other’s territory.
A court in Bangladesh had earlier this month sentenced Rahman to nine years in prison and his wife to three years, in absentia, in a money laundering case.
Rahman, the son of slain former Bangladesh president General Ziaur Rahman and ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, was allowed to leave for London after signing a conduct bond on being arrested for graft by an Army-backed caretaker government in 2008.
“We would also like the money laundered by him abroad to be extradited,” said Mr. Huq, a U.K.-trained lawyer who chose to become a politician.
“The Awami League government did not arrest Rahman. He was arrested by a caretaker government which was backed by the Army. An anti-corruption commission probed the cases against him and submitted the chargesheet on the basis of which the judiciary has passed sentences,” the Minister pointed out in answer to opposition charges of bias in the prosecution of the BNP leader.
Besides facing judicial proceedings in a number of graft and money laundering cases, the co-chairman of the opposition BNP is also accused of being the mastermind of a grenade attack on Sheikh Hasina’s rally in 2004, which killed more than a score of people.
The latest sentencing has come amid BNP demands and protest rallies calling on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down and hold elections under a caretaker government — a demand which has been rejected by the ruling Awami League government.
The Hasina government is likely to go in for an election before January-end next year as its term in office ends then.
“Our constitution provides that elections have to be held within 90 days of the end of the term of a government and we expect a winter election to be conducted by the Election Commission,” Mr. Huq said.
Though the opposition led by BNP has been in disarray ever since Khaleda Zia, Rahman’s mother and former prime minister of Bangladesh was jailed on corruption charges in 2018, it is expected to mount a credible challenge to Awami League in the forthcoming election.
Huq in his interview with PTI said that his country was also negotiating the return of two “self-confessed killers” of Sheikh Mujib - Rashed Chowdhury from the U.S. and SHBM Noor Chowdhury from Canada.
“While the whereabouts of Major Shariful Haque Dalim, (a principal plotter behind the killing) is still not known, we know that Col Rashed Chowdhury is in the US and Noor Chowdhury, another of the coup plotter involved in the killing of Bangabandhu is in Canada. We are still in talks with the US on getting the killer officer back,” said Huq.
Canada has laws which do not permit a person facing a death sentence at home to be extradited and this has proven to be a hurdle.
“They killed the father of the nation and 17 members of his family… Given the heinous nature of the crime, we have tried to convince Canada to return Noor Chowdhury,” the minister said.
The gruesome killing of Sheikh Mujib and his entire family save his two daughters- Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana - who were travelling abroad, at their Dhanmondi bungalow on India’s Independence day had shaken the entire world 28 years ago.
“They are self-confessed killers and the available evidence is conclusive of their crime,” Huq, a London-trained senior advocate of the Bangladesh Supreme Court said.
In 1975, a coterie of middle-level Army officers planned a coup to topple Sheikh Mujib’s elected government and replace it with a military government. They chose August 15, India’s independence day, to carry out the coup.
Four groups of soldiers led by the coup plotters entered Dhaka in the early hours of August 15, 1975. The first group entered Sheikh Mujib’s house and killed him after an argument and then went on to slaughter all members of the family as well as personal staff present, including a pregnant daughter-in-law of the family.
Other groups took over the radio station, key government buildings and disarmed security forces stationed at Savar in the city.
Four Awami League leaders – the first Prime Minister of Bangladesh Tajuddin Ahmed, another former PM Mansur Ali, a former Vice President Syed Nazrul Islam and former home minister AHM Qamaruzzaman – were also arrested and incarcerated in Dhaka jail, and later murdered in prison.
Bangladesh consequently marks August 15, as a national day of mourning.
“We have relentlessly tried to track down and bring to justice the killers of Bangabandhu,” said Huq.
Two years ago, Abdul Majed, a former captain in the Bangladesh army and one of the killers, was hanged after being brought back from abroad. Ten years before that, five other convicts -- Syed Farooq Rahman, Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Bazlul Huda, AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed and Mohiuddin Ahmed -- were executed in January 2010, while a fifth Aziz Pasha died in Zimbabwe.
