Salam, who had returned to Bangladesh after the end of Afghan war and formed HUJI-B along with other Afghan war veterans, admitted that he attended a meeting held at the Dhaka residence of a former BNP Deputy Minister Abdus Salam Pintu that had chalked the Aug 24 (2004) plot to assassinate Awami League chief, Sheikh Hasina.
Others present at the meeting were Pintu’s fugitive brother and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) leader Maulana Tajuddin, former BNP State Minister for Home Lutfozzaman Babar, Huji commander Mufti Abdul Hannan and some other influential persons.
Earlier, a CID investigator told the court that former BNP ministers Lutfozzaman Babar and Abdus Salam Pintu had assisted HUJI-B in its attempt to kill Hasina on Aug 21.
Babar and Pintu had directly helped Maulana Tajuddin, who supplied grenades for the attack. The Maulana has since fled Bangladesh and has taken shelter in Pakistan.
Pakistan-based LeT activist Abdul Majid Butt alias Abu Yusuf Butt was remanded on Dec 3 to police custody for his role in the Aug 21 attack. He is alleged to have aided HUJI-B in the assassination plot. Yusuf landed in Bangladesh in 2004 with the help of Maulana Tajuddin and adopted the name Abdul Majid to carryout his mission.
UDICHI BLAST CASE
A Jessore court granted (Dec 8) a seven-day remand for HUJI-B commander Mufti Abdul Hannan in Udichi bomb blast case. Hannan was arrested soon after HUJI was banned (Oct 01, 2005) under pressure from the western and donor countries. He has confessed to his involvement in the Udichi carnage (on March 6, 1999) at Jessore Town Hall which left 10 people killed and over 100 injured. The blast ripped through the town hall when a cultural program organized by Udichi Shilpi Goshthi, a leading cultural group, was underway.
Convicted War Criminals and Islamist militants for BNP?
War criminals convicted under Bangladesh Collaborators (Speedy Tribunals) Order, 1972 can now have membership or leadership of BNP’s committees at any level.
The BNP National Council (on Dec 9) cleared the decks for their entry by deleting the bar on membership to them in the party constitution. The proposal came from the National Standing Committee of the party. War criminals are those who had either opposed the liberation war or collaborated with the Pakistani forces.
Hasina government plans to put on trail all those involved in the 1971 crimes. It is looking to the International Criminal Court to hold the trail of ‘genocide, crime against humanity and crime of aggression’ in Bangladesh. Towards this end, Bangladesh will take steps to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Law Minister Shafiqul Ahmed said after a meeting with the visiting the ICC President Sang-Hyun Song in Dhaka (Dec 6)
