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Tarique promised attackers safe exit

Witness tells court

Chaitanya Chandra Halder
BNP Senior Vice Chairman Tarique Rahman assured Huji chief Mufti Abdul Hannan and his associates that he would arrange a safe passage out of the scene once they carried out the grenade attack on an Awami League rally in 2004, a witness told a Dhaka court yesterday.
Abu Hena Md Yusuf, inspector of Criminal Investigation Department, said this in his deposition to the Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 as a prosecution witness in the August 21 grenade attack cases.
He claimed that Hannan, while on remand in Ramna Batamul blast cases, told him aboutTarique's assurance.
After recording Abu Hena's deposition, Judge Shahed Nuruddin fixed June 3 for the next hearing. Defence lawyers will cross-examine the witness on that day.
I\venty-four AL leaders and workers, including Ivy Rahman, were killed and 300others were injured in the grenade attack on the AL rally at Bangabandhu Avenue in the capital on August21,2004.
The attack was aimed at assassinating AL President Sheikh Hasina, then leader of the opposition. Hasina narrowly escaped death.
Two cases — one under the explosive substances act and the other for murder — were filed after the incident.
Abu Hena told the court that he had earlier investigated the Ramna Batamul blast cases and submitted charge sheets against Huji chief Hannan and
13 others on November 29,2008.
During investigation of the Ramna Batamul blast cases in 2005, Abu Hena interrogated Hannan about the grenade and bomb blasts that took place at different places in the country.
Hannan admitted that he along with his accomplices in 2000 had planted a 76-kg
FROM PAGE 1 bomb at Kotalipara where Hasina was to address a rally.
They also carried out attacks on Hazrat Shahjalal's shrine in Sylhet, the then Sylhet City Corporation Mayor Badaruddin Kamran, AL leader Suranjit Sengupta and former British High Commissioner Anwar Hossain Choudhury.
The Huji chief told the CID official that he along with Moulana Tajuddin, brother of former deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu, held a meeting at Pintu's Dhanmondi residence to plot the August 21 grenade attack.
Hannan told his accomplices that during a meeting at Hawa Bhaban, Tarique assured him that all the attackers would be provided safe passage out of the scene after the attack, and that Tarique communicated the matter to the then state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar.
On assurance from
Tarique, elder son of the then prime minister Khaleda Zia, Hannan collected grenades from Tajuddin and gave those to his accomplices to stage the attack.
The CID official recorded Hannan's statements in writing during the investigation.
Abu Hena submitted the written statement to his superiors — the then additional Inspector General of Police Khoda Baksh Chowdhury, CID Special Superintendent of Police Ruhul Amin and ASP Munshi Atiqur Rahman.
He also told them that Hannan would make a confessional statement before a Dhaka court.
The high-ups got upset with the CID official, as he included information on the August 21 grenade attack in his written statement. They directed him to drop the information and record a confessional statement only on the Ramna blasts.
The CID official complied
with the instructions of his superiors.
Hannan later made a confessional statement to the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court but he did not mention anything about the August 21 grenade attack, Hena said.
Of the 52 accused in the grenade attack cases, Babar, Jamaat-e-Islami Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and 24 others, who are now in custody, were produced before the court yesterday.
Seven other accused, including former Dhaka City Corporation ward councillor Ariful Islam Arif, now out on bail, were present at the court.
Tarique and 18 other accused have been shown absconding in the cases.
The CID on July 3, 2011, included Abu Hena as a prosecution witness in the charge sheets of the cases since he was present at the AL rally during the grenade attack.