3. BDR Carnage: Victims’ families want quick trial: The Daily Star, July 14
Family members and relatives of the army officers slain in last year’s BDR mutiny demanded quick and fair trial of the killers.
In their reaction to submission of the charge sheet of BDR killing case, some of them expressed their concern over the time needed for the trial terming it a bit lengthy.
On February 25 and 26 last year, 57 army officers were killed during a 33-hour mayhem at the BDR headquarters in Pilkhana, Dhaka.
"All I want is to see the trial finish quickly," said Fatema Sultana, wife of slain Col Gulzar Uddin Ahmed, in a voice choked with emotion.
Kazi Harun-ur-Rashid, elder brother of slain Col Kazi Emdadul Haque, said, “It took 35 years to dispose of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman murder case. I am afraid I won’t be able to witness the killers of my brother get punished if the trial takes that long."
"I want to ask the killers why they killed my brother," he added.
Nehreen Ferdousi, wife of slain Col Mujibul Haque, said it has been almost one and a half years since the carnage and she still does not know why her husband was killed.
"After so much hard work for the country why should they [army officers] face such death? I want the trial to finish soon and the killers punished," said Nehreen.
Nishad Rahman, wife of Col Mohammad Nakibur Rahman, told The Daily Star that she wants the trial to be fair.
Hasnahena Chowdhury, wife of slain Maj Hossain Sohel Shahnewaz, said, "We now have nothing much to ask for but a proper trial. http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=146644

4. A challenge to restore the credibility of the process: Dr. Mozammel H. Khan in The Daily Star, July 14
The author is Convener, Canadian Committee for HR & Democracy in Bangladesh.
Jamaat leaders Motiur Rahman Nizami, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid and Delwar Hossain Sayedee were arrested more than a week ago, apparently not for their alleged role during the Liberation War but for failing to appear before a Dhaka court in connection with a case of hurting the religious sentiment of the country’s Muslims. According to government sources, they were detained not because they were Jamaat leaders, but because arrest warrants had been issued against them.
They, however, have not yet been charged with war crimes. Rather, they have been booked for hurting religious sentiment of Muslims, instigating violence, obstructing law enforcers and for several murders during the Liberation War.
Three of those cases were filed with Paltan police station in the capital, and are in connection with assault on police, and attempt to murder; one was filed with Ramna police station in the capital in connection with an incident of torching a car on June 27 this year, in which two persons were severely burnt; and the other is a sedition case filed with Uttara police station in the capital in March this year for a conspiracy to destabilise the government.
All three of them were also shown arrested in connection with Rajshahi University student Faruq Hossain’s murder. There are ongoing court orders for their remand for 16 days each in all the cases together. Following their arrest, they have, however, been granted bail in the original case for which they have been detained.
As it appears now, a series of other charges, including Chittagong arms-haul case, are in the offing, based on their reported confessions during remand. The arrests, the subsequent remand and the stories of confessions under duress are nothing unusual in Bangladesh, especially since the onset of the last BNP-Jamaat government.
In fact, it was the BNP-Jamaat government which initiated the culture of remand in the country. Torture was a common phenomenon during that regime. Innocent people like Jaj Mian, Mokhlesur Rahman and others were the inventions and outcomes of criminal investigation during that dark era.
Judicial investigations were transformed into exercises for creating fiction rather than unveiling the truth, as one sees in the partially leaked reports of the Mymensingh cinema hall bomb blast and the August 21 tragedy.
Against that backdrop, it is indeed a big challenge for the investigating teams, even if their members are professional, independent and impartial, to restore credibility to the process being used to frame charges against any arrestee. The challenge has added more dimensions to the current tasks. The odds are many.
Firstly, the arrestees are the top leaders of a legal political party and, one time or the other, they were elected to represent their constituents in the parliament through a reasonably free and free election and were cabinet ministers in the erstwhile government. Never before in the history of legal proceedings of the country have politicians of this high echelon been indicted for these sorts of charges.
Secondly, people have very little faith in the outcomes of the criminal investigations involving opposition politicians. Due to the lack of precedence, it would be very difficult to convince the people that the top leader of a political party, notwithstanding its widely known violent practice and despicable agenda in the political arena and its virulent image of 1971, could be implicated for crimes allegedly committed by the lower levels leaders and workers of the party.
Thirdly, "conspiracy," "sedition" and "destabilisation" are words commonly used by any government in Bangladesh while implicating opposition politicians. People attach very little credence to those allegations even if there is a certain degree of merit in them.
Fourthly, the arrest for such apparently trivial (in the context of Bangladesh’s political minefield) and common charges, as opposed to crimes against humanity, has created an opportunity for the leader of the opposition to come up with a statement demanding their release and terming the detention as politically motivated.
An open-minded observer will have very little trouble in countering her observation, since implications like these are not unique in the political culture of Bangladesh, and no politician of significance has ever been convicted in the court of law for committing these kinds of crimes.
Her terming of the proposed trial of war criminals as an attempt to "divide the nation" was simply preposterous and did hold any water since this so-called "division" is nothing new. It existed during the war of liberation, for instance, when ten of the eleven sector commanders’ wives opted to join their husbands, except for one who elected to remain in the protective custody of the enemy forces.
Finally, if the investigating authorities, whose credibility reached the lowest ebb during the last BNP-Jamaat government, fail to come up with concrete evidence and unflinching witnesses to prove the merit of the charges to be framed against them not only in the court of law but to the public court as well, the arrestees will garner undue sympathy not only from the common people but from their severest detractors, who believe in rule of law, as well.
It might create a boomerang effect, in terms of lost credibility of the process, for the government in their pledge to bring the alleged war criminals, of which the three arrestees are believed to be leading members, to book, and for which the government enjoys the overwhelming mandate of the people.
People, by and large, notwithstanding the concerted efforts of the successive post ’75 governments to erase and distort the real history of our golden chapter, have no apprehension in their minds about their direct involvement in the worst genocide committed in our planet since the World War II.
The onus now lies on the investigating authority to collect and compile the overwhelming evidence available both at home and abroad, albeit after a lapse of forty long years, to make an insurmountable case without any potential loopholes.
It will be disastrous if any sort of intermediate mishaps result in loss of credibility of the investigation, thereby trivialising the guilt of the heinous crimes. Any such incident will make a dent in the process of fulfilment of the nation’s aspirations to pay our overdue debt to our martyrs. http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=146618