BAZLUL BASID CHOUDHURY chronicles in brief the events leading to the judicial killing of Maulana Motiur Rahman Nizami, Ameer of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami.
Bangladesh has executed Motiur Rahman Nizami, chief of the country’s largest Islamic political party through a trial procedure that international human rights groups have condemned as deeply flawed. The controversial hanging was executed early on 10 April.
Nizami was a Cabinet Minister during former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s last term from 2001 to 2006. His trial was held by Bangladesh’s domestic International Crimes Tribunal, established by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2009 to try those believed to be responsible for the worst atrocities of the secession struggle.
Human rights groups say the Bangladesh tribunal’s process has fallen far short of credible and fair justice, appearing mainly to serve as a method of railroading suspects to the gallows. The tribunal restricted the number of defence witnesses who could testify during the war crimes trials. Mr Nizami was allowed just four – and disallowed any defence challenge to inconsistent prosecution testimony.
“We have no complaints about these guys being prosecuted, but you have to find all the evidence,” says Meenakshi Ganguly, a South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch. “What’s happening is there is not enough of an attempt to build the prosecution case and there is very little attempt at the right to the defence.”
Mr Nizami is the fourth politician from Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI) to be executed after conviction by the tribunal. In November, a senior BNP leader, who had been a long-time parliament member, and the party’s secretary general, was also hanged.
In 2013, the convictions of (BJI) leaders by the tribunal triggered some of Bangladesh’s most deadly political violence in decades, with around 500 people killed, mostly in clashes between BJI supporters and police. Since then, authorities have arrested thousands of Jamaat supporters, while many leaders have gone into hiding.
Originally sentenced Nizami to death on October 29, 2014 and after an appeal hearing, the apex court in its January 2015 judgment found the punishment appropriate for him.
The prison authorities served Nizami the death warrant on March 16 as the apex court’s decision reached them in writing, following which the Jamaat chief preferred to seek review of the Supreme Court judgment.
He was arrested on July 29, 2010 on charges of hurting religious sentiments. After three days, he was shown arrested in a war crimes case.
Previously, three other party leaders of BJI, Ali Ahsan M. Mujhid, Mr. Abdul Quader Mollah and Mr. Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, were executed in the similar fashion.
Execution of Nizami occurred despite repeated calls and diplomatic efforts, including from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Human Rights Commission of the United States Congress, the United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Stephen Rapp, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
International Human Rights groups that have spoken out against the judicial proceedings also include The International Centre for Transitional Justice, the International Bar Association, No Peace without Justice, Members of the United States Congress, Members of the British Government, Members of the United Kingdom House of Lords and the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has declared the process in breach of international law, and has referred the matter to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Apart from the general overall weaknesses in proceedings of the so-called International Tribunal in relation to Nizami’s trial, three immediate issues come to mind:
1. Charge no 16, one of the offences for which Nizami received the death sentence, was not part of the prosecution’s initial charge framing application, but appears to have been added (as seen from the e-mails leaked during the ‘skype’ scandal) at the request of an outsider to the tribunal, Ziauddin Ahmed, a legal academic who whilst advising the judges was also in touch with the prosecution.
2. Nizami’s defence lawyers were allowed to call only four witnesses in defence of 16 charges, whilst the prosecution was allowed over 20.
3. At least one prosecution witness, Shamsul Huq Nannu, claimed in a recorded interview that he was briefed and coerced to give evidence against Nizami. (He subsequently denied that he ever gave the videoed interview, but independent tests done on the voice recordings commissioned by the defence suggested that it was the same person.)
Whilst, in the end of course it is only through a fair trial process that guilt can properly be apportioned, the prism of moral justice cannot simply be put to one side. In addition, disclosures from the international news media show that there is overwhelming evidence of serious judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.
The government has conspired with members of the judiciary, and the prosecution, to bring about the desired result for the conviction and execution of the leading members of BJI. The tribunal has become a mockery of inter-national law, and undermines all major international instruments to protect fundamental human rights principles and basic standards of justice. Despite these criticisms, the Bangladeshi government is still determined to carry out executions of opposition leaders.