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Justice order of the day

SC delivers Bangabandhu verdict at 11:00am today as nation waits to see culprits behind the horrendous crime get punished

Syed Badrul Ahsan
The nation waits to hear the ultimate verdict today in the Bangabandhu murder case trial with bated breath and also in the expectation that finally justice will prevail. It has been a long, painful journey for the people of Bangladesh. It ought not to have been this way, for the particular reason that the liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistani occupation in December 1971 was considered symbolic of a clean break with the past. That Bangalees would see democracy grow in their country, that under the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman they would go forth to create Shonar Bangla. a cause the Father of the Nation had consistently espoused since he emerged with his Six-Point programme of regional autonomy in the mid- 1960s, was not a misplaced expectation. Indeed, it was a dream that seemed eminently attainable with Bangabandhu as the undisputed leader of this country.
And yet that dream was to be marred by the conspiracies already afoot to undermine Bangabandhu and his government. These conspiracies took form and substance even as the government struggled to provide meaningful leadership to the nation. In the pre-dawn hours of 15 August 1975. the conspirators struck. As the nation slept, the killer squads fanned out across various key points in Dhaka, the pre-eminent one being the residence of the President of the Republic, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. In one fell stroke, the assassins put an end to the life of the Father of the Nation and to the lives of most members ofhis family. I Ils wife, three sons, two daughters in law, his brother, his brother in law Abdur Rab Semiabat. his nephew Sheikh Fazlul Haq Moni and Moni's wife Arzoo were all murdered in what would be a macabre demonstration of ferocity.
The assassins would not be prosecuted for a long period of twenty-one years. An infamous indemnity ordinance, put in place by the usurper president Khondokar Moshtaque Ahmed and subsequently incorporated in the nation’s sacred constitution by General Ziaur Rahman, Bangladesh's first military ruler, ensured that Bangabandhu's killers (who had also murdered the four national leaders in prison in November 1975) would remain beyond (he pale of the law. The killers were indeed rewarded, through being appointed to the nation's diplomatic missions abroad. After Zia’s assassination in an abortive coup in May 1981, successive governments until 1996 made no effort to overturn the indemnity ordinance and bring Bangabandhu's killers to justice. During the Ershad period between 1982 and 1990, die assassins were permitted to form political parties and take part in elections. When a popular uprising forced General Ershad from power in December 1990 and democracy was restored tiirough the general elections of February 1991, the nation looked forward to a time of healing of the old gaping wound. Regrettably, the government led by Khaleda Zia, widow of Ziaur Rahman, pursued the old policy of keeping the killers safe from prosecution.
Twenty-one years after August 1975, the Awami League was voted back to power in June 1996. The government it formed moved briskly to annul the indemnity ordinance and bring Bangabandhu's killers to justice. Those among the assassins who were inside the country were arrested; the others were on the run. outside Bangladesh. That in no way obviated the requirements of justice. Parliament annulled the indemnity ordinance, clearing the way for the perpetrators of the August 1975 tragedy to be brought before the law. In what, it considered to be the need for transparency and for justice to be done and to be seen to be done, the government of Sheikh Hasina initiated proceedings against the killers of 1975. In November 1998, the men
accused of killing the Father of the Nation and his family were found guilty and sentenced to death.
And then everything stalled with the return to power of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in 2001. The new government of Begum Zia appeared reluctant to pursue the case. In more than one instance, judges felt embarrassed about presiding over the appeals hearings in the case. Conditions came to a pass where soon an inadequacy of judges on the bench led to a stultification of the proceedings of the case. It was a situation that would permeate the entire period of the BNP-Jamaat alliance government between 2001 and 2006.
The return of the Awami league to office through its victory at the general elections of December 2008 marked the beginning of a new phase in the Bangabandhu murder trial. Over the last many months, review petitions filed by die convicts have been heard and both prosecution and defence have argued the case in detail.
This morning is. in light of all the twists and turns of the last three and a half decades, or nearly, a moment of reckoning. On a bigger scale, it ought to be a new dawn where a restoration of values should come to underpin Bengali collective life once more. It should be a day where the people of Bangladesh can rise in unison and proclaim to the world that crime does not pay, that rule of law eventually is triumphant, that through a legal condemnation of murder and mayhem we as a nation are finally ready to expiate our collective sin of witnessing Bangabandhu die and staying quiet about the grievous tragedy for years on end.
The judicial judgement today, we believe in the core of our beings, will give us back our self-esteem as a nation — the dignity we caused to flower in ourselves under the inspiring leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in our armed struggle for liberty back in 1971.