War Crimes Trials And now the Amnesty International

And now the Amnesty International (AI), the watchdog body for world-wide human rights has come up with a statement on its website under the title Bangladesh: Two opposition leaders face imminent execution after serious flaws in their trials and appeals, on October 27m 2015. According to AI, "in 2013, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and Salauddin Quader Chowdhury were sentenced to death by the country's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) on charges of war crimes and genocide at trials that failed to meet international standards for fair trial. Both men had their convictions and sentences upheld on appeal in June and July this year respectively". This time around, the human rights body went further by asserting that, "serious crimes were also committed by the pro-independence forces, but no one has been investigated or brought to justice for them". 

In the past, a number of organisations expressed their concerns in general about the trial process, but none of them went as far suggesting, as AI did, that the "pro-independence forces" should also be brought to justice. This is equivalent to suggesting that it was not only the Nazis, but also the members of allied forces in World War II which should have been brought to justice.  

Reading through my multiple contributions in TDS since the inception of the trails, AI researcher Abbas Faiz contacted me multiple times over the years, asking for clarifications on many aspects of the trials and, in some cases, asking for a few documents, which were duly supplied to him. Yet, "their trial and appeals process were clearly flawed and since they now face the death penalty the ultimate miscarriage of justice may be only days away," said David Griffiths, Al's South Asia Research Director. "The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and can never be a way to deliver justice," said Abbas Faiz, AI's Bangladesh researcher. The AI researcher must recognise that it is the victims in particular, and the people of Bangladesh in general, who possess the unimpeded right to decide what form of punishment would "deliver justice", as long as it is done under the law enacted by the lawmakers of this sovereign country.

In fact, AI's attributions of them as 'opposition politicians' reflect its absolute ignorance of Bangladesh's history of birth or the misinformation fed by some quarters. What could be more ignorant than when AI opined that the trials have "targeted opposition leaders"? What could be a more ludicrous observation? It was primarily Jamaat-e-Islami, and to a lesser extent Muslim League, the political opponents of AL, that collaborated with the occupation forces and worked against our Liberation War. The two convicts were members of those above-mentioned political parties. So how could one surmise that the convicts are linked to political opponents? One would be surprised to note that the AI has termed Jamaat's anarchistic reaction to every verdict as a "peaceful demonstration" and asked security forces to ensure people's right to demonstrate peacefully. 

It would be in order to look back at two particular condemned war criminals for whom the AI has come up with the recent statement. Albeit, not for the purpose of comparison; it could be stated that the final death penalty verdict of Salauddin Quader Chowdhury could very well be qualified as the most 'popular' one among all such verdicts pronounced so far. The convict, better known for his antics, vulgarism and unprecedented notoriety, has never expressed remorse for his nationally-known crimes. Legal procedures seemed like they were nothing to him, so he violated the court decorum willfully and laughed at the judges and lawyers. Attempts to prove at this stage that he was not in Bangladesh during the nine months of genocide through some alibi witnesses from Pakistan, is equivalent to attempting to prove a hypothesis that the sun does not really rise in the East. 

I wrote a piece in TDS (March 5, 2004) about the second convict; an excerpt of it was as follows: "I had a classmate in my hometown college; both of us were activists of the same student party and together got elected to the students' union. Over the years, he changed his political belief and in 1971, we were on the opposite sides of the history. As a leader of the infamous Badar-Bahini, he was instrumental in torturing and killing our people, while I was baiting my life to save them. Currently, he is a very powerful cabinet minister of the alliance government". However, no matter what Mojaheed had been rewarded with in independent Bangladesh, his classmates did not forget or forgive his felonious past and barred him from joining the reunion of the Class of '66 of that college that took place  when Mujaheed was a cabinet minister and flew the hard-earned green-red flag of my country, whose creation he opposed tooth and nail.

From the inception of the trials, the odds have been high. It was a daunting task for the prosecutors to collect evidences and witnesses for the horrendous crimes that were committed some 42 years ago. During the greater part of that period, the parties and people who were in state power were neither in favour of the trials nor contemplated that the trials would ever take place. In many cases, the documentary evidences pertaining to the crimes were systematically destroyed. Also many of the direct witnesses of the crimes that happened 44 years ago have passed away. In the face of the killings of several witnesses by the supporters of the convicts, it was risky for the witnesses to come forward to testify. 

In my limited research, I have not come across any war crimes tribunal whose proceedings are as transparent and where the defendants are given VIP treatment. Also in accordance with international standards, trials are open to all. At the same time, the accused are given adequate time and facilities to prepare their cases. Prosecutors must furnish them with a list of witnesses, along with the copies of recorded statements and documents upon which they intend to rely. Defendants also have an unfettered right to call witnesses and cross-examine prosecution witnesses. All of this is in keeping with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The US Ambassador-at-large for War Crimes, Stephen Rapp, who visited Bangladesh a number of times over the past years to monitor the trial process, has emphatically lauded all attributes of the trial process in his last visit to Dhaka in August last year. In his words, "the best way in the world to find the truth is the judicial process where the evidence is presented, where witnesses are cross-examined, where both sides have an opportunity to be heard and that is what is being done here [Bangladesh]. It is the process that the American government strongly supports," he affirmed.

The writer is the Convenor of the Canadian Committee for Human Rights and Democracy in Bangladesh.