Islamists’ International: Pakistan and Erdoğan Protest The Execution Of Bangladesh War Criminal

Sent to the gallows: Time ripe to expose Modi-Hasina nexus, says JI

- A headline in The Express Tribune, Pakistan, May 13th, 2016.

In the eyes of Pakistan, former Bangladesh Jamaat-i-Islami leader Motiur Rahman Nizami, who was executed May 11 in Dhaka Central Jail after being convicted for war crimes, was a patriot who fought to prevent the dismemberment of his country.

In Dhaka’s eyes, Nizami, a former senior minister and member of Parliament, was a war criminal whose dreaded Al-Badr brigade had gone on a genocidal rampage during the Liberation War of 1971, systematically massacring thousands of Bengali intellectuals who wanted freedom from Pakistan.

And in the eyes of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who withdrew his ambassador to Dhaka in protest, Nizami was “a mujahid, who is over the age of 70 and who we believe has no earthly sin.”

As for India, Vikas Swarap, spokesman for India’s ministry of external affairs, declared that while “the issue of war crimes trial is internal to Bangladesh..it has wide popular support. India has also been supportive of a judicial process to address pending issues of retributive justice for war crimes committed during the movement for the independence of Bangladesh in 1971.”

India’s foreign secretary Dr S Jaishankar, who was in Dhaka hours after the execution of Nizami as part of a scheduled bilateral visit, expressed “India’s strong support to Bangladesh in its fight against extremism and terrorism, particularly in response to recent attacks against vulnerable sections of society.”

Jaishankar was in Dhaka to follow up on the various agreements signed by Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Hasina Wajed during the former’s visit to Bangladesh in June last year.

Bangladesh has been in the headlines for the wrong reasons of late, due to the rising number of attacks on secular intellectuals, including bloggers, university professors and journalists.

Various rabid outfits seeking Islamic or Sharia rule in Bangladesh, including the Daesh or IS --which recently appointed a head of its unit in Bangladesh -- have claimed responsibility for these brutal attacks on ‘apostates and disbelievers.’

Pakistan’s strong protests against the execution of Nizami –and other Jaamat leaders earlier-- is not surprising.

The Jaamat is known for its strong pro-Pakistan and anti-India position. When it was in power as part of an alliance with Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party from 2001 to 2006, Pakistan’s High Commission in Dhaka was known as the second largest wing of the Inter Services Intelligence, or ISI, outside Islamabad. Various Indian separatist outfits were given shelter, training and weapons in Bangladesh during that period.

Nizami, a three-time MP, was also given a death sentence in 2014 by the tribunal probing the Chittagong arms haul, in which 10 large trucks full of arms and ammunition meant for the ULFA, a separatist outfit from the Indian state of Assam, were seized near the port in 2004. Several other ministers and leaders of Jaamat and the Khaleda Zia government at the time were also indicted in the case.

But his execution earlier this week came after the Bangladesh Supreme Court upheld the death sentence awarded by the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal or ICT, which is investigating the atrocities committed by pro-Pakistan elements during the Liberation War of 1971.

Nizami, who was the then chief of the Islami Chhatra Sangha, the Jaamat’s student wing, converted it into the Al-Badr militia which worked with the Pakistani army to suppress the rebellion.

Armed with a ‘Kill List” of students, professors and other secular groups, this paramilitary force went on a deadly genocidal spree of rape, loot and murder against anyone known to sympathise with the liberation movement.

The ICT, formed in 2009 by the government of Hasina Wajed and her Awami League, has popular support in Bangladesh, though the opposition and several international human rights organisations have raised questions about its credibility and functioning.

In its 2014 verdict, the ICT found Nizami guilty of eight of the 16 charges against him, and sentenced him to death by hanging.

In February 2013, massive protests erupted across Bangladesh when Jaamat assistant secretary Abdul Quader Mollah was given a life sentence by the Tribunal, with thousands of demonstrators demanding the death penalty. Charges against him including the shooting of over 300 people and the rape of an 11-year-old. In September that year, the Supreme Court overruled the life sentence and awarded him a death sentence, which was carried out on December 12.

Other Jaamat leaders executed after their indictment by the ICT include Muhammad Kamaruzzaman (April 2015), and Jaamat secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed in November 2015.

As for Turkey’s Erdogan, it is important to remember that his remarks followed protests by Muslim supporters who gathered in front of the Bangladeshi embassy in Ankara and a park in Istanbul, chanting slogans like “Oh Muslim, don’t sleep, protect your brother,” and “Hell awaits the wrongdoers.”

“12 million people have been victimized in Syria and about 600,000 innocent people have been killed. No Muslim can completely free himself/herself of responsibility for this sin. Those who keep silent now in the face of what happens in Bangladesh cannot get rid of responsibility either,” Erdoğan said.

Most Bangladeshis believe that these trials and executions will help bring closure to the millions of people affected by the ethnic purge carried out by the Pakistani army and its supporters in 1971.

But others sound a note of caution.

“Many Jaamat supporters are now making a bee-line for the Daesh in Bangladesh, which is a different kettle of fish altogether, far more dangerous than the ISI,” says senior Indian official who requested anonymity because his views “clash with the conventional Indian position.”

“Do we really want another Afghanistan, or heaven forbid, a Syria on our eastern border?” he asked.