Hasina seeks ‘justice’ as Mujib murder verdict awaited

DHAKA - “All I want is justice,” Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said Wednesday as the nation, with security at key establishments beefed up, awaited the verdict in the trial of the killers of the country’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Hasina, the elder daughter of the slain leader who lost all her family members in a military-led coup d’etat on the night of August 14, 1975, is in Rome and photographs showed her wiping her tears as she said she hoped the Supreme Court judgment, due Thursday, would be “fair”.

“I don’t want to say anything else now,” she told a reception accorded by the Italian chapter of Bangladesh’s Awami League in Rome, where she is attending a food security conference, Star Online said.

“There will be no room for the killers on the soil of Bangladesh,” she said in a firm voice, the website of the Daily Star reported.

The government has beefed up security and asked Awami League cadres not to organise processions as the country awaits the verdict.

A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court is scheduled to give its ruling 11 a.m. on the appeals filed by five former army officers who were awarded death sentences 11 years ago.

Special security forces have been deployed around the Dhaka Central Jail where all the five condemned prisoners are lodged.

Sheikh Mujib, officially addressed by the honorific Bangabandhu, led the movement that culminated in Bangladesh’s independence following separation from Pakistan in 1971.

His killing, and that of a score of his family members and political associates, is an emotive issue in Bangladesh.

Before leaving for Rome, Hasina called for a “vigil” by all, alleging that violence could be provoked by “vested quarters”.

She did not specify but her general refrain could be against the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by her rival Khaleda Zia and her Islamist allies.

“Remain watchful so that no untoward incident takes place in your constituencies,” Minister of State for Law Quamrul Islam told Awami League lawmakers, the Daily Star newspaper reported.

“The police and other law enforcement agencies will follow a special strategy so that no evil force can carry out any act of sabotage over the announcement of the verdict,” Home Minister Sahara Khatun said.

The killers were a group of young army officers, who went on to murder not just the charismatic president, but also his wife, three sons, two daughters-in-law and about 20 other relatives and aides.

They escaped from the country in November 1975 and subsequent governments of military strongmen, Generals Ziaur Rahman and and H.M. Ershad, gave some of them diplomatic postings.

The trial of the killers began two decades after the incident and a high court bench upheld, when Hasina was in power 1996-2001, the death sentence awarded by a trial court. The verdict was appealed in the apex court.

The case dragged on and many judges “excused themselves” during the next eight years. The re-trial began this year after Hasina’s return to power.

Five of the accused - Lieutenant Colonels Syed Farook Rahman, Shahriar Rashid Khan, Mohiuddin Ahmed, A.K.M. Mohiuddin and Major Bazlul Huda - are in prison in Dhaka. Six others are on the run abroad. The Hasina government is trying to secure their return.

The six fugitives, believed to be in Saudi Arabia, Libya and other countries, include Major Shariful Haq Dalim who had announced the coup and the murders on the radio.

One of the alleged killers died in Zimbabwe two years ago.