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AUGUST 21-GRENADE ATTACK-JUSTICE
Nation’s long wait seeking justice of Aug 21 grenade attack finally ends
By Anisur Rahman & Sajjad Hossain Sabuj
DHAKA, Oct 10, 2018 (BSS) – The nation’s long wait seeking justice of the August 21, 2004 brutal grenade attack that killed 24 people and wounded nearly 500 has finally ended as a special court here today pronounced verdict regarding the attack.
With the verdict pronounced by Dhaka’s 1st Speedy Trial Tribunal Judge Shahed Nur Uddin the nation was freed from stigma of committing most shocking crime in the political history.
The makeshift Dhaka Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 set up at a building near the gate of old Dhaka Central Jail sentenced 19 people to death and 19 others including BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman to life imprisonment.
Judge Shahed Nur Uddin pronounced the verdict ordering Rahman to be exposed to prison term for life along with 18 others and sentenced 19 people including former junior minister Lutfuzzaman Babar and ex-deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu and several former army intelligence officers to death penalty.
“They (who are sentenced to death) shall be hanged by neck until they are dead,” Nuruddin pronounced as 31 of 49 the accused were present on the dock while several others are on the run abroad to evade justice.
The judge also made 12-point observation on the background, motive and consequences of the attack, mainly targeting incumbent Prime Minister and then opposition leader Sheikh Hasina, who narrowly escaped the assault sustaining wounds.
At least 24 leaders and workers of the opposition Awami League and its associate bodies including president of Mahila Awami League, women’s wing of the Awami League, Begum Ivy Rahman, were killed and 500 others suffered fatal splinter injuries, some of them became crippled for life, in the grenade attack usually launched in a war.
The prime motive behind the grenade attack was to eliminate the Awami League leadership including its president Sheikh Hasina from the sacred soil of the country so that the party, which successfully led the war of liberation in 1971, could never come to power again.
The BNP’s anti-liberation allies, particularly the Jamaat-e-Islami and HuJi, joined hands in the deep-rooted conspiracy to eliminate such a big number of people mainly the Awami Leaguers by creating mayhem with an ulterior motive to revert to the neo-Pakistani era in a sovereign and independent Bangladesh.
The horrendous and barbaric grenade attack was mounted on an anti-terrorism public rally at Bangabandhu Avenue in the heart of the capital city Dhaka with another intention to reverse the pace of immense development and progress either initiated or accomplished by the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has directly accused the then prime minister Khaleda Zia and her son Tarique Rahman of perpetrating the barbaric attack saying that they were directly involved in the carnage.
“There is no doubt that the BNP, Khaleda Zia and her son Tarique Rahman were directly involved in the gruesome grenade attack on the Awami League rally (on that day),” she said on August 21 last commemorating the 14th anniversary of the assault.
“The key objective of the attack was to eliminate the leadership of Awami League and to consolidate the power of the then BNP-Jamaat alliance government and making their reign everlasting,” Special Public Prosecutor Abdullah Abu said in court.
The evidences and testimonies of key accused and crucial witnesses including the then Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) chief, however, unfolded gradually the plot substantiating the comments of the Prime Minister.
DGFI’s the then director general now retired major general Sadik Hassan Rumi earlier appeared as a crucial prosecution witness in the court. He said that the perpetrators of the attack targeting the incumbent Prime Minister (Sheikh Hasina) were protected under higher political authority’s directives.
“I was asked not to catch them (culprits) . . . There was no dearth of efforts on my part to unearth the plot but I was repeatedly obstructed,” Rumi told the trial court as the belated trial of several high-profile suspects of the attack was underway.
Rumi insisted that the ex-premier (Khaleda Zia) appeared annoyed and virtually rebuked him as he wanted to talk to her on the attack issue and subsequent investigations.
“From where you gathered the ridiculous information . . . what is your headache if Tajuddin (a key attack suspect) goes to Pakistan or anywhere else?” Rumi recalled Khaleda Zia as asking him as he tried to confirm a report that she herself ordered his (Tajuddin) safe passage abroad.
The key accused of the case Mufti Abdul Hannan, chief of the militant outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI), in his confessional statement, gave a detailed description how the plot was orchestrated as his outfit was entrusted with the task to kill Sheikh Hasina and other front-ranking Awami League leaders.
His long statement depicted the direct involvement of Tarique Rahman, the then state minister for home affairs Lutfozzaman Babar and former deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu.
“Tarique Zia (Rahman) assured us of giving all kinds of cooperation . . . then we held a series of secret meetings at different places including Mohammadpur to kill Sheikh Hasina and Awami League leaders,” Hannan said in his confessional statement before a magistrate.
Hannan, who was later hanged after trial for attempt on former British High Commissioner Anwar Chowdhury’s life, said the plotters subsequently learnt that Awami League would stage an anti-terrorism rally on August 21, 2004.
“We took a plan to stage an attack on Sheikh Hasina and Awami League leaders there and decided to meet Tarique Zia again to execute the plan,” he said.
Evidences of the August 21, 2004 grenade attack on the Awami League rally had intentionally been destroyed while a police investigation into the incident was diverted along other avenues, CID Additional Deputy Inspector General Abdul Kahar Akand has said.
Akand, the officer tasked with investigating the August 21 attempt on the life of then opposition leader and current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said: “The then investigation officers knew that militants of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) had repeatedly been trying to kill Sheikh Hasina. But, the officers did not show any interest in the matter during the first phase of the investigation.”
The perpetrators, he said, wanted to destroy the Awami League and they made repeated attempts to kill Sheikh Hasina in a bid to turn the country into a militant state. Many people from the then ruling party were involved in the conspiracy.
Investigations earlier found that an influential quarter of the then BNP-led government, including Rahman, masterminded the assassination plot and sponsored the attackers — the operatives of militant Harkatul Jihad al Islami (HuJI).
The two former junior ministers and two former military officers who headed two major intelligence agencies at that time of the grisly attack faced the trial in person.
“We are talking steps to return the fugitive convicts and expose them to justice,” home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told newsmen as the verdict came after a protracted trial for the gruesome attack on an opposition rally with military weapons.
The vicious attack was carried out on an anti-terrorism public rally of Awami League in the capital on August 21 in 2004, one of the black days in the history of Bangalee nation, aimed at killing the front ranking leaders including its president and incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to eliminate the party leadership.
The day was a Saturday and an anti-terrorism procession was scheduled to be brought out after the end of the rally. So, instead of building a stage they were using a truck-dais (lorry) as a makeshift stage. After other Awami League central leaders delivered their speeches at the public rally, Sheikh Hasina began to speak. She even had finished her speech. It was 5:22 in the afternoon. “Joy Bangla, Joy Bangabandhu”, she said ending her speech in her usual style and folding the paper of the speech she started for the stairs to descend from the truck-dais. All of a sudden, the sound of grenades signaled the breaking of all hell.
Grenades exploded in tremendous horrid noises. The lively Bangabandhu Avenue turned into a death valley in no time. The assassins were blasting the grenades one after another. Before anyone could get a hold of the situation, blasting of 13 gruesome grenades turned the entire meeting area into a wad of flesh and blood. The whole area seemed to be river of blood only.
Sheikh Hasina was the main target of the assassins. The leaders who were on top of the truck and the personal security officials of Sheikh Hasina created a human shield to protect her. At the cost of the sacrifices of the leaders and the bodyguards and by the blessings of the Almighty, Sheikh Hasina’s life was saved.
In order to succeed in their devious endeavor to make another bloody 15th August, the charging of consecutive 13 grenades were not enough, the assassins wanted to make sure that Sheikh Hasina was not spared under any circumstances by shooting a number of shots to her car as well.
This targeted and planned attack (opening of gunshots) was not successful because of the bulletproof glasses on her car. But, in an attempt to save her from the bullets of the murderers, her personal security guard Lance Corporal (retd) Mahbubur Rashid sacrificed his life creating a human shield.
Life of Sheikh Hasina was saved from the planned attack, but the area became a valley of death on that black day. Hundreds of people were tattered with the splinters of the grenades. Among the sudden deaths and blood-bathed legs, hands and other limbs of human bodies of the peaceful people were spread around everywhere. Some lost their hands, some their limbs.
The pitch black roads around the venue turned red with the colour of blood. Some were asking help to save their lives, fervidity of the dying people, stricken screams made it an indescribable agonising scene.
Although the human shield created by Awami League leaders and workers around their party president Sheikh Hasina was able to save her from the splinter infested onslaught, many like senior women leader Ivy Rahman and 24 other workers of Awami League were not so lucky.
Additionally, more than 500 AL workers and spectators still carry the wounds with live splinters inside their bodies as a testimony to the horror of that fateful day. Many had been left permanently handicapped.
Ivy Rahman met the most brutal death one could imagine. Her legs were blown off from below her waist and she sat like a statue in deep shock. Hundred others lay like her, some dead and some alive that nobody could differentiate.
Awami League’s Dhaka City unit president and former Mayor of Dhaka City Mohammad Hanif died a few years later from the wounds sustained on August 21, 2004.
Though Sheikh Hasina narrowly escaped the attack, she lost her hearing ability due to the impact of the repeated grenade blasts near the truck-dais of the huge public rally.
Those other killed in the barbaric grenade attack included opposition leader’s personal security guard Lance Corporal (retd) Mahbubur Rashid, Abul Kalam Azad, Rezina Begum, Nasir Uddin Sardar, Atique Sarkar, Abdul Kuddus Patwari, Aminul Islam Moazzem, Belal Hossain, Mamun Mridha, Ratan Shikdar, Liton Munshi, Hasina Mamtaz Reena, Sufia Begum, Rafiqul Islam (Ada Chacha), Mostaque Ahmed Sentu, Md Hanif, Abul Kashem, Zahed Ali, Momen Ali, M Shamsuddin and Ishaque Miah.
Prominent among those who also suffered serious splinter injuries included Amir Hossain Amu, Abdur Razzak, Suranjit Sengupta, Obaidul Quader, Advocate Sahara Khatun, Mohammad Hanif, Prof Abu Sayeed and AFM Bahauddin Nasim.
Two separate cases, one for murder and another under Explosives Substances Act were filed on August 22, 2004, and the police on June 9, 2008 filed the charge sheet. The court on September 29, 2008, framed charges in the case.
Investigation Officer and also Additional Deputy Inspector General of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of police on July 2, 2011, submitted a supplementary charge sheet before the court and the court on March 18, 2012, framed charges afresh after taking the new charge sheet into cognizance.
Fifty two people were held accused in the case while prosecution suggested an influential quarter of the then BNP regime including party’s senior vice-chairman Tarique Rahman masterminded its shocking plot engaging militant outfit HuJI and subsequently made desperate efforts to protect the assailants.
Three of the accused top HuJI leader Mufty Abdul Hannan, Sharif Shahedul Bipul and then Jamaat-e-Islami secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujaheed however, were by now executed after trial in other cases.
A total of 31 accused including two former ministers faced the trial in person while 18 including Tarique Rahman were tried in absentia as they are staying abroad.
Tarique, now in London, and 17 others including several intelligence officials were earlier declared “absconding” as they were on the run to evade justice.
Eight suspects including three former police chiefs were on bail as the trial was underway while the court on September 18, 2018, scrapped their bail and ordered their confinement in jail with due facilities they deserved under law.
BSS/SH/AR/SHAH/1750 HRS