The British Supreme Court has delivered a landmark verdict in the defamation case brought by prominent Muslim community leader Chowdhury Mueen Uddin against the British Home Secretary.
On Thursday, June 20, 2024, Lord Reed, President (Chief Justice) of the Supreme Court, announced the historic unanimous verdict. British-Bangladeshi Chowdhury Mueen Uddin expressed satisfaction with the Supreme Court’s ground breaking judgment.
The case was heard on November 1-2, 2023, on a bench chaired by Lord Reed and included Justices Lord Sales, Lord Hamblen, Lord Burrows, and Lord Richards. In 2019, Chowdhury Mueen Uddin initiated the defamation suit against the Home Office through Carter-Ruck, a leading defamation law firm. His legal team comprised senior solicitor Adam Tudor and counsels Jacob Dean and Lily Walker-Parr.
Chowdhury Mueen Uddin brought defamation proceedings against the Home Secretary for the 2019 report by the Commission for Countering Extremism of the British Home Office titled “Challenging Hateful Extremism,” which accused Chowdhury Mueen Uddin of extremism and referenced the controversial ICT verdict in Bangladesh accusing him of crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War, Chowdhury Mueen Uddin vehemently denied these allegations asserting his innocence regarding any involvement in crimes during the 1971 conflict and dismissing the Bangladeshi authorities’ accusations as wholly baseless and politically motivated.
The Supreme Court verdict highlights that Chowdhury Mueen Uddin was born in 1948 in East Bengal, which was part of Pakistan at that time. Bangladesh achieved independence in December 1971 following the Liberation War. Since 1973, Chowdhury Mueen Uddin has been a resident of the United Kingdom and is a British citizen from 1984. During his time in the UK, he has taken on substantial roles in numerous social and charitable organizations.
In civic society, Chowdhury Mueen Uddin held several high profile civic and humanitarian positions, including Secretary General of the Council of Mosque: UK & Eire and Director of the Muslim Spiritual Care Provision in the NHS, a project under the British Ministry of Health. He was one of the founder members and chairman of the international humanitarian charity Muslim Aid UK. He chaired a diverse Multi-Faith alliance encompassing nine world faith groups including Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and other faith communities.
The verdict states that Chowdhury Mueen Uddin lived an open and unrestricted life in the UK for a substantial 41 years until the ICT case. The Bangladeshi government was aware of his whereabouts throughout this period. The ICT’s assertion that he either ‘absconded’ or ‘concealed himself’ is plainly not true.
The verdict highlights that Chowdhury Mueen Uddin was convicted in absentia by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in 2013 for alleged crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War, more than 40 years after the conflict. The ICT’s failure to uphold acceptable judicial standards in its proceedings and reliance on testimony from witnesses who were minors at the time, hearsay evidence, and media reports has drawn widespread criticism and condemnation from international judicial, legal and human rights institutions including the United Nations, the European Union, and many foreign governments.
The verdict also notes that Interpol initially issued a red notice against Chowdhury Mueen Uddin at the request of the Bangladesh government, but later revoked it, citing procedural irregularities in the ICT’s legal process amounting to gross violations of international fair trial standards. The verdict quotes from the Interpol Commissions report a long list of the international institutions who criticised the ICT proceedings such as: the United Nations, (the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention), diverse foreign governments and national entities (United States Special Ambassador for Global Criminal Justice, United States Congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, European Union Parliament, United Kingdom as well as various human rights organizations (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, International Commission of Jurists, International Centre for Transitional Justice), which all express serious concerns over the procedural safeguards before the ICT and document instances of witness abduction, intimidation of defence counsel, media censorship, pressure to convict from the government, lack of independence of judicial officers.
The Commission concluded on the basis of the information provided by the Bangladesh authorities themselves, that the ICT proceedings against the claimant were notcompliant with Interpol’s constitution or with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Home Secretary filed a court application to dismiss Mr. Mueen-Uddin’s claim, arguing it constituted legal abuse. It was firmly stated that Mueen Uddin’s defamation case wouldn’t be admissible in the British High Court. The application also noted that his reputation in Bangladesh has faded following the 1995 Channel 4 documentary against him and his conviction as a war criminal.
Dismissing the Home Office’s claim, Mr. Mueen Uddin noted that since the Channel 4 documentary he met with the HM the Queen and current King and the then Prince of Wales on several occasions, and attended the Queen’s Garden Parties at Buckingham Palace.
The Supreme Court overturned the decisions of the High Court and Court of Appeal upholding the application of the Home Office and ordered trial. The President of the Supreme Court Lord Reed, overseeing the proceedings, stated that the fundamental right of access to courts for any individual is defined as their civil right. This right has been recognized for centuries by common law and the Magna Carta, and is protected under the Human Rights Act 1998.