RULING PARTY MP NAMED AS 'COLLABORATOR'
Nation stunned by exposure of
conspiracy to destroy BDR
M. Shahidul Islam
The gruff compound of BNP's Gulshan office seems like an unlikely setting for geopolitical brainstorming, let alone for hosting global think tank dignitaries who may care about Bangladesh and its prospective political trajectory.
On a dusty, sultry afternoon when both the country's PM and the leader of the opposition were about to set sail for official businesses toward various Western capitals, my arrival to this activist-packed, highly secured BNP fortress roughly coincided with the departure from the compound of veteran Bangladesh enthusiast and former US Ambassador to Dhaka, William Milam, and Lt. Gen (retd) Henry Hank Stackpole, the latter being renown for rushing his forces to the shores of Bangladesh to assist the 1991 disaster victims upon urging of then PM, Khaleda Zia.
Stricken by seasonal illness, Zia looked frail but radiant in her favourite rose-tainted attire. Yet, the three-time PM did not fail to impress upon me about her innate disposition on matters that are the most burning and the enduring ones at this very moment, internally and externally. She seemed cognizant that the matters national and the international are not mutually exclusive anymore.
No wonder that the leader of the opposition seemed wary of the geo-political complexities and the national security-related downturns which she wants to catapult to status quo ante upon assuming power through a mid-term poll for which moves are afoot in full swing. "The BDR mutiny was a pre-planned massacre to destroy our armed forces," she mourned with discernible melancholy. "We will restore the glory of this force by reverting back to its previous structure and composition. We will also reinstate the old name, BDR", she informed.
Thousands of miles away, while addressing party loyalists in New York City on May 23, the leader of the opposition again retorted with anger-soaked emotions: "We did not earn our liberation to become an Indian satellite."
All such utterances prove her seriousness about the nation's state of affairs. Coincidentally, her concerns about the quintessential India factor and its disastrous ramifications on our national polity were seen reverberating during an unprecedented pandemonium that had marked the much-awaited murder trial of the Peelkhana mutiny; the counsels for the defendants shouting and screaming in the court house on May 22 for not having received copies of the case while the judge claiming that he had no pending applications for delivery of such case records to those counsels.
One can only guess who'd resorted to lies, or in whose vested interest such lies could be rationalized. Yet, all the 11 defence lawyers claimed they had never received copies of the case records and were unaware of what their clients were accused of, despite the Criminal Investigation Dept. (CID) having filed the charges 10 months ago, on July 12, 2010, to be precise.
That such a scenario has lurked on the fifth day of a snail-paced hearing, 10 months after the charges were first filed, speaks a volume about how shoddily the trial has been fashioned and how perfunctorily the prosecution and the court are treating a historic case involving the heinous conspiracy that aimed at destroying our armed forces.
Such publicly displayed flaws and pitfalls notwithstanding, the staged showmanship of the trial could not conceal a major exposure. Counsel for one of the main accused—local ruling party leader and a former Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) of the BDR, Subedar Torab Ali - informed the court on be half of his client that a prominent ruling party MP has had meetings with the mutineers in days and weeks prior to the mutiny.
This is not the first time the MP's name surfaced to the fore as an alleged collaborator in the BDR mutiny. But that it did from Torab Ali himself, and the allegations against the MP were read out by Ali's counsel before the judge and the prosecution, is a remarkable breakthrough, to date. The statement said, "The planners of the mutiny, DAD Towhid and DAD Nasir, had visited the residence of the said MP before the election (and the mutiny) a number of times, along with some of their associates." It added, "I (Torab Ali) have seen them myself in that MP's house a number of times."
A reliable source with knowledge of the investigation-related documents—and the confessional statements of the accused—said that Torab Ali had also confessed earlier to attending meetings at the same MP's house prior to the election and the subsequent mutiny at the BDR headquarters in which at least 75 people, including 57 army officers, were brutally murdered and incidents of rape, arson and other crimes against the humanity occurred.
Other probative evidence relating to the investigation revealed the above mentioned MP was present in at least four pre-revolt meetings with the mutineers. These facts were further corroborated in the confessional statements of Sepoy Ashraful and many other lead accused, of which this scribe has obtained copies.
All these are indicative of how serious the BDR massacre issue may turn unless the political nexus of the crime is traced to the fullest. So far, the only justice the nation had witnessed is the random sentencing of hundreds of foot soldiers, with cosmetic 2-7 years of imprisonment, as is permissible under s10 A (1) of the BDR Act , 1972.
Observers say, the latest exposure of a deep-seated 'political conspiracy' is unlikely to pass away unnoticed due to its coming at a time when the victims' families are yet to fathom why two other major decisions of the government had to facilitate denial of justice and cover up. One of them is the decision to proscribe standard military action in the aftermath of the mutiny on February 25-26, 2009, and, the other is the decision to use civil court to try a mutiny within the armed forces, which is rarely seen or heard anywhere else in the world.
A number of legal scholars have maintained that the Bangladesh Rifles Order 1972 being inadequate to punishing the kinds of inhuman crimes perpetrated by the accused, the trial was supposed to occur pursuant to Chapter V of the Bangladesh Army Act (BAA), 1952. That it did not remains an unmitigated aberration. They say the BDR is a disciplinary force, as is narrated in Article 152 of the Constitution, as well as in section 4(3) of The Bangladesh Rifles Order, 1972.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one retired military lawyer said, "Not only Section 5(1) of the Army Act has the requisite mandate to apply it to any disciplined force by issuing a gazette notification, the deliberately orchestrated debate over the trail jurisdiction is unjust and irreconcilable."
During my interactions with some of the victims' families, I found them treading on emotional volcano. One of the slain officers' spouses said, "The trial is unlikely to dispense justice due to the mysterious death in custody of many of the main accused and the absconding of 21 others who had acted as the main attackers to trigger the mutiny and who had left the country with cooperation of intelligence officials."
Such an indictment against intelligence officials acting as facilitators to save criminals is painfully damning and profoundly dangerous, and, the latest exposure encapsulates how the entrenched political culture of our nation allows immunity from interrogation of powerful people who have proven complicity in serious crimes against the nation. It also reminds one of one of the famous Orwellian dictums that 'some animals are more equal than the others.' Despite a slew of evidence pointing toward the said MP's complicity to the crime, he is neither an accused, nor a witness, as yet, in the case in which 824 combatants and 23 civilians have been charged so far.
The world at large is also stunned by the solidity and the impregnability of the said MP's immunity. In mid- 2009, an attempt by the army investigation team to interrogate the said MP had to be aborted due to his instant departure from the country following making of a formal request for his quizzing by members of the army investigation team. One senior BNP leader said, "These facts too were brought to the attention of the UK and the US governments."
As these facts get internationalized, the home front must address these concerns with the kind of priority they deserve. Faced with overwhelming evidence involving his complicity in the BDR mutiny, the ruling party MP from a Dhaka constituency - who's also related to the PM - can do a great favour to himself and to his party by coming out of his closet to defend against these allegations. So far, his only defence was the issuance of a press release on June 9, 2009, in which he labelled the allegations as 'false and concocted.' Such a generalized rebuttal will not cut the ice any more.
Concerns also abound why, despite the decision of the PM not to allow the military to quell the rebellion, the said MP used his political team force the civilian residents to vacate three kilometres radius of the Peelkhana compound in the wee hours of February 25, 2009, when much of the massacre occurred and following which the main murderers fled from the Peelkhana compound. It can not be a coincidence that the brutally dismembered corpses of the slain officers were later found strewn in drains and dungeons within that three mile radius.
Time is also ripe for the elusive MP to answer why he had, flouting all laws of the land, entertained and mingled with serving members of a disciplined force at his residence and elsewhere.
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