Gulam Rabbani :
Former Jatiya Party lawmaker from Mymensingh MA Hannan along with his son was arrested from Gulshan in the capital city on October 1 in 2015 in a case filed for allegedly committing crimes during the Liberation War in 1971. Later the investigation team of the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT)-1 prepared and submitted an investigation report against eight people, including Hannan, to the prosecution section of the ICT in the case. In
the meantime, Hannan and two other accused, including his son, of the case died.
Sources said, former lawmaker MA Hannan died on June 15 in 2021, his son Dr Rafique Sajjad died on May 15 in the same year and other accused Mizanur Rahman Mintu died on March 20 in 2020 in the jail. Two others accused in the case are absconding and three others are in jail.
The trial process of the case couldn’t be finished in the last five years. The tribunal in the meantime has testified 11 persons in the case. It has fixed May 4 for the next testimony.
Rahima Khatun, the wife of martyred freedom fighter Abdur Rahman from Trishal, filed the case on May 20 in 2015. A court in Mymensingh recorded the case and sent it to the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka for further work.
A total of 36 such cases are pending with the International Crimes Tribunal since 2016. Among them, the cases of Salamat Ullah Khan and others of Cox’s Bazar, Captain (Retd) Shahidullah, Major (Retd) Wahidul Haque, Amjad Hossain Mollah from Jashore and Abul Khair Golap and others from Habiganj are highly mentionable.
Sultan Mahmud Simon, a Prosecutor of the International Crimes Tribunal, said, “The trial activities in Hannan’s case are not going well as three of the eight accused have died. During the course of the trials, the 12 accused of the International Crimes Tribunal died while undergoing treatment.”
Regarding the trial process of the other cases, he said that after receiving a case from the investigation team it is lodged with the tribunal after verifying and sorting the information with utmost seriousness, if necessary, visiting the spot and talking with the witnesses.
“Then, it needs more time to frame charge in the case. Then when the trial of the case officially started, a lot of time consumed in taking witnesses. Witnesses do not want to come to tribunal for different reasons including threat from the accused. This long procedure takes a long time in a case,” the Prosecutor also said.
The International Crimes Tribunal was set up in March 2010 for the trial of different criminal offences happened during the Liberation War in 1971. After that complaints started coming from different parts of the country to the tribunal, which still continues.
According to the statistics, the investigation team of the tribunal has completed the investigation against 237 accused in 81 cases in the last 12 years. But within this time, the trial of 106 people in only 44 cases was completed. A total of 36 cases are still pending with the tribunal and one case is waiting for trial process. Only seven cases were settled in the Supreme Court in the meantime.
Concerned persons say that the completion ratio of cases is less than the complaints placed in the tribunal. Several more cases could have been settled. However, due to different crisis including the spread of the Coronavirus the trial process has been delayed.
According to them, the trial process in the tribunal has been very slow in the last three years. However, the trials of the major accused were over.
