It has been a long, sad and shameful wait to see justice done in the case of Bangabandhu's assassination.

It is after long 26 years of his brutal murder that the assassins are finally facing the fate that they deserve. We want all legal steps to be completed and the guilty ones to get the full benefits of law, an iota of which they did not grant to Bangabandhu and his family when they slaughtered en masse. They butchered them all including the 10-year old Sheikh Russell and the two

newly married wives of Sheikh Kamal and Sheikh Jamal. They exhibited an extent of blood thirstiness, which is rare in our history and non-existent as a trait in our people.

It is to the credit of Sheikh Hasina's government, and a measure that we fully lent our support to, that the trial of Bangabandhu's killers took place under ordinary law of the land. No special tribunal, no special court and no special act of parliament was passed to bring these killers to book. As a result, the process took far longer time than perhaps we would have liked it to.

But at the end of it law stands upheld, the trial process beyond question and the outcome enjoying national and international credibility.

The wait has also been sad. As freedom fighters we could not bear the thought that the man who suffered more than a decade of jail term for our cause, the leader who united us behind the idea of an independent State, and the inspirational personality whose speeches and deeds inspired us during the greatest period of our history, namely the Liberation War, should be murdered and his killers would not even be tried. It was not a question of judging Sheikh Mujib for his actions nor asserting that he did not have any flaws or that he did not make any mistake. It was simply a case of giving that much to him and his family that our law entitles each and everyone of us to. As days turned to weeks, weeks to months, months to years and years to decades a deep sadness filled our hearts at the knowledge that the most vicious crime was being given the varnish of a great 'patriotic' act and the killers instead of being punished were being rewarded at public expense. It was almost as if night was being made into day, darkness into light and evil into virtue.

The wait was also shameful-most shameful. It was as if the nation was being mocked. Murderers became law-makers. They passed an ordinance giving immunity to themselves from trial for what was clearly one of the most gruesome murders--of a leader and his family in the post-Second World War period. Later, the Indemnity Ordinance was made a part of the

Constitution giving them permanent protection against any legal measure for their heinous act. While the world progressed towards democracy, accountability and freedom we became the only country in the world where self-professed killers were given immunity by an article of the Constitution. Our heads bowed in shame as the supreme law of the land--our Constitution--was defiled.

Twenty-six years ago the most gruesome tragedy fell upon us. Sadly, we are experiencing a tragedy (among several others) of a different kind today, and that is what prompted today's commentary. Many people today are judging the verdict on Bangabandhu's killers NOT on the basis of the fundamental immorality of the act, the enormous inhumanity of the event, and the basic unconstitutionality of the action BUT on the basis of their views and attitudes towards Sheikh Hasina and the performance of the present day government. The tragedy is that the corruption, nepotism and partisanship in almost every action of the present government and its widespread abuse of power are affecting people's attitude towards the verdict on

Bangabandhu's killers. We feel deeply saddened when decent and otherwise democratically minded people take an ambivalent attitude towards this trial and its outcome. This we find to be most tragic and warn that it must be avoided.

To us far more than a legal or a political question, the trial of Bangabandhu's killers is a MORAL question. It is something that we owe to history, to all those who participated and died in our Liberation War and, most importantly, to ourselves. Did the leader whom we trusted, admired and followed deserve to die the way he did? What was the crime for which he was deprived of the life in which he was at its prime (he was only in his mid-fifties and think of what he had already achieved by then)? Was it for BAKSAL or the excesses of Rakkhi Bahini or Siraj Sikdar's death in police custody that he was assassinated? Is Bangabandhu the only leader in history to have made mistakes? De Gaulle ruled France with an iron hand and was quite hated by the time he left. Didn't Ho Chi Minh make any mistake, or for that matter Gamal Abdul Nasser or Fidel Castro? Take Mao Ze Dong.

Didn't his agricultural policies and industrialisation schemes cause havoc to the Chinese economy leading to famine and death of thousands? Didn't his Cultural Revolution result in economic, social and intellectual disaster? The Chinese people honour Mao in spite of his faults and mistakes because of his role in bringing independence to his people. Why can't we do the same for Bangabandhu? Would it be wrong to say that Mao was able to give freedom to the Chinese people but was a failure as a builder of modern China? Doesn't that same epitaph go for Bangabandhu as well?

Then again who are the people who killed him, along with much of his family? Are they better patriots, better democrats, better politicians or better human beings? By what right did they play with the fate of our people and the destiny of our country? If anybody had the mandate of the people it was Bangabandhu. He grossly misused it when he formed BAKSAL. But the punishment for that could only be meted out by the people, who only have the right to make and break an elected leader. No major, no captain and no

havildar has any such 'right'. We seem to forget that Bangabandhu was no usurper of power but an elected leader who came to power because people chose him. And it was the chosen leader of the people who was murdered by people who had nobody else's support except their own. So there is a fundamental moral and ethical question linked with the trial of his killers.

There are two simple messages that we would like to conclude with. First, that in spite of everything else Bangabandhu must be judged and honoured for the simple fact that he has led us to freedom. Second, that as a human being and as a citizen of this country he is entitled to the same dispensation of law and of justice that everyone else is entitled to.

The trial of Bangabandhu's killers is the most significant moral action of our time and that should form the fundamental basis of our way of looking at it.