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Killers at home turn leaders abroad

Staff Correspondent
Not only did they dodge trial for killing intellectuals in 1971, but Al-Badr leaders Chowdhury Mueen Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman were lucky enough as well to establish themselves as influential communityleaders abroad.
Immediately after December 16, 1971 when Bangladesh achieved the victory in the Liberation War, Mueen fled the country and soon emerged as a leader of the Muslim community in the U K.
Despite being a fugitive killer, he managed to get British citizenship and became, among other things, the vice chairman of East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre, a director of Muslim spiritual care provision in the National Health Service of UK and a trustee of the UK-based international NGO-- Muslim Aid.
Though little could be known about Ashrafuzzaman, he too made for himself a place in USA's South Asian Muslim community by becoming the chief of the Queens, New York branch of Islamic Circle of North America. He is currently a US citizen.
In the post-independence period, photographs of Mueen Uddin, operation in charge, and Ashrafuzzaman, main executor of the intellectual killing mission of Al-Badr, were published in several newspapers in Bangladesh with a call to capture them.
Both of them were top leaders of Island Chhatra Sangha, the then student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, which vehemently opposed the birth of Bangladesh in 1971.
Yesterday, International Crimes Tribunal-2 awarded both of them death penalty for killing the brightest luminaries of Bangladesh with the heinous motive of intellectually crippling the soon-to-be-bom country.
Despite the long-awaited trial of these killers, the execution of the verdict remains uncertain as they are foreign nationals now and their extradition is believed to require a lot of diplomatic efforts.
In spite of having such grave charges hanging on their neck, Mueen managed to visit his native village in Feni twice under police protection and safely fly out of the country during the regimes of Ziaur Rahman and HM Ershad, according to a prosecution witness and a report of Special Branch of Police.
"Instead of being condemned, Chowdhury Mueen Uddin was actually honoured by the state machinery. What a shame! What a shame!" observed the court yesterday.
Mueen, son of Delwar Hossain Chowdhury and Diljan Begum of Chandpur village in Dagonbhuiyan upazila of Feni district, studied at Feni College and Dhaka University. He did his graduation from the Bang! a department of DU in 1971, according to a report of the December 29, 1971 issue of Dainik Purbadesh, where Mueen was a staff correspondent
He was involved with Islami Chhatra
Sangha from his school life and became its central publicity secretary in 1970.
During the Liberation War, Mueen was the operation-in-charge of Al-Badr's intellectual killing mission and actively took part in the killings.
On April 15 last year, The Daily Telegraph, a UK-based newspaper ran a report headlined "Leading British Muslim leader faces war crimes charges in Bangladesh" which said that after moving to the UK in the early 1970s, Mueen Uddin had taken British citizenship.
In 1989, Mueen Uddin played a key role in the protests against Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses' and around the same time, he helped establish the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), the European wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, the report said.
Until 2010, Mueen Uddin was the vice-chairman of the East London Mosque, controlled by the IFE. He used this capacity to greet Prince Charles in 2003 when the heir to the British throne opened an extension to the mosque
He was also closely involved with the IFE-dominated Muslim Council of Britain and was the chairman and still remains a trustee of the IFE-linked charity Muslim Aid, which has a budget of £20 million, the report added.
However, according to the Bangladesh field office of Muslim Aid-UK, Mueen Uddin was a trustee until mid-April, 2013.
In an interview with Al Jazeera in July this year, Mueen said "I live an open and transparent life for last 40 years in Britain. I am a respected member of the community and I take part in the activities of a number of welfare and charitable and other organisations. "
He also claimed, "I was not involved in any criminal activities of any nature in 1971 and thereafter. In fact, I was not even a supporter of the military crackdown of March 25,1971.1 resigned from my political post after the crackdown."
Dainik Purbadesh, however, published a report on December 29, 1971 titled "Operation-in-Charge Mueen Uddin: This killer has to be captured" with his photograph.
Ashraf alias Naeb Ali Khan, son of Ajahar Ali Khan and Roimunnesa of Chhotovatara village under Muksudpur upazila of Gopalganj district, was a student of Islamic Studies at Dhaka University and obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1970.
He was a central leader of Islami Chhatra Sangha and contested the DUCSU election in 1970, according to the prosecution.
He had also served as the commander of Gazi Salahuddin Company of Al-Badr and actively took part in the killing of intellectuals, the prosecution said. On January 13, 1972, Dainik Purbadesh published a report headlined, "Help arrest the killer of intellectuals", with a photograph of Ashraf.
After independence, he fled to Pakistan and later to the US, according to