Govt firm on executing war tribunal verdicts: minister

Activists of Hefajat-e-Islam hold copies of daily newspaper Amar Desh during a rally in Dhaka yesterday. The activists demanded capital punishment for a group of bloggers, who organised the recent Shahbagh demonstrations, and the introduction of blasphemy laws. They also demanded the release of acting editor of daily newspaper Amar Desh, Mahmudur Rahman, who is in remand by a Dhaka court on charges of sedition.

IANS/New Delhi

The Bangladesh government is firm on executing the verdict of a war crimes tribunal and is awaiting the Supreme Court’s final verdict in July, Bangladesh Information and Broadcasting Minister Hasanul Haq Inu said yesterday.

Maintaining that the proceedings of the war crimes tribunal, which went into excesses committed by Islamists during the country’s liberation war in 1971, are “open and transparent”, Inu said: “The government is firm on executing the verdict .. By July the Supreme Court will give its final verdict.”

“The sentences will be carried out soon,” he said.

He also said that the Islamists did “side” with Pakistan during the liberation war, which led to creation of Bangladesh from East Pakistan.

“They would say ‘Stop India to protect Islam’, but the slogan was not accepted by the people of Bangladesh … the people voted for democracy and secularism,” he said.

He said the Islamists were trying to indulge in “goondaism” and added that the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party of Khaleda Zia had come out openly in support of the Islamists.

The country’s war tribunal in March had sentenced Bangladeshi politician Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, to death for murder, torture, and rape during the 1971 war.

The Bangladesh government in March moved the Supreme Court seeking death penalty for Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Mullah, who escaped with life imprisonment from a war crimes court for committing “crimes against humanity” during the independence war.

Inu had said on Thursday that the government may consider banning the Jamaat if armed cadres of the Islamist party continue to indulge in violence and terrorist acts.

The Jamaat, a constituent of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led 18-party opposition alliance, is a registered political party. Its cadres have been on the streets, indulging in violence, to protest the conviction of some of its leaders by a war crimes tribunal for killings and rapes committed during the 1971 war of liberation.

Inu said the Jamaat as a political party has to abide by the election commission’s directives. The Bangladesh election commission can ban the Jamaat if it violates rules, so can the courts and the government, said Inu during a talk on the “Current Situation in Bangladesh” at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi.

“The Jamaat is indulging in armed activities,” said Inu.

The Sheikh Hasina government is also watching to see how a case in the Bangladesh high court challenging the registration of Jamaat as a political party will turn out, said Inu, who heads Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, a constituent of the ruling alliance.

Government files fresh case against Bangla newspaper editor

A fresh case of hurting religious sentiments has been filed against Mahmudur Rahman, acting editor of mass-circulated Bangla daily Amar Desh, who was arrested on Thursday on sedition charges.

Rahman was accused of publishing distorted pictures of the Kabaa Sharif Ghalib and its Grand Mufti in news reports carried by the daily. The case was filed against at the Tejgaon police station yesterday.

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police deputy commissioner (media) said that the case was filed against Rahman under the Section 57 of Information & Communications Technology Act, 2006.

On December 6 last year, pro-Bangladesh Nationalist Party Amar Desh and pro-Jamaat-e-Islami Dainik Sangram published news reports about Imams forming a ‘human chain’ at Kabaa Sharif (Saudi Arabia) to protest the persecution of ‘Alems’ (Islamic scholars) in Bangladesh.

The report turned out to be false.

Faced with massive protests over the online social networks, both newspapers removed the report from their online version. Dainik Sangram even issued a public apology.

Social networks and blogs had claimed the picture was actually one of Kabaa Sharif’s Ghalib being changed.

After arrest of the four bloggers on April 4, Law Minister Shafique Ahmed and Home Minister M K Alamgir said the misrepresentations of facts would be acted against.

Rahman was arrested from Amar Desh office on Thursday morning on charges of sedition and for unlawfully publishing an alleged Skype conversation of a former chairman of the International Crimes Tribunal.