Opinion The forty-year indictment

That last bit is not quite justified,seeing that those accused of war crimes were indeed participants in large-scale atrocities perpetrated in Bangladesh by the Pakistan army and its local collaborators throughout the nine months of the country’s war of liberation in 1971. As to the question of why the trials are being proceeded with 40 years after Bangladesh became a free country,the fact remains that the Collaborators Act,which came into force in 1972 — only months after the surrender of the Pakistan army to a joint India-Bangladesh military command in December 1971 — was done away with by the military regime of General Ziaur Rahman in late 1975. Earlier,in August of that year,Bangladesh’s founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family were assassinated by soldiers in what would be the first military coup in the new country. The killings were followed by the murder of four prominent politicians,all leaders of Bangladesh’s government-in-exile during the war and subsequently members of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s cabinet,in prison.

The 1975 coup turned out to be an opportunity for jailed collaborators of the Pakistan army for a fresh new beginning in politics. The repeal of the Collaborators Act thus brought into Bangladesh’s politics all those elements that had openly collaborated with the Pakistan army during the war.

The case against Sayedee may certainly be regarded as the first step toward bringing the ageing loyalists of the Pakistani military to account. Another prominent rightwing politician,Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury,now under detention on charges of committing crimes against humanity,could soon be indicted. Media reports,quoting investigators attached to the International Crimes Tribunal,have already let it be known that evidence of at least 32 criminal acts committed by him in 1971 have been unearthed.

Some other leaders,especially of the Jamaat-e-Islami,whose leaders and workers actively helped the Pakistani authorities to organise such murder squads as al-Badr and al-Shams in 1971,are also lined up for war crimes-related trials.

The difficulty for the Bangladesh government in seeing the trials through,though,is two-fold. On the one hand,it needs to keep its public pledge to bring them to a quick conclusion. On the other,it must convince the international community that the trials are being conducted under standard international rules,and are therefore a clean,transparent process. In recent weeks,however,the government’s decision not to let foreign lawyers willing to defend the accused into the country has led to muted questions. That only increases the pressure on the authorities for the trials to be seen to have been a proper,legal and moral exercise of the system of justice.

It may be noted that soon after the end of the war in December 1971,the Bangladesh government went on record with its intention to put on trial Pakistani military officers and general soldiers on charges of war crimes. The intention was never put into implementation mode,as a tripartite deal reached by India,Pakistan and Bangladesh in the early 1970s saw Pakistani military personnel,then in India as prisoners of war,go back to their country while tens of thousands of Bengalis trapped in Pakistan as a result of the war were repatriated to their new country.

Over the years,many of the local Bengali collaborators of the Pakistan army were systematically rehabilitated by successive military regimes and rightwing governments in Bangladesh. Three of them — Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury,Matiur Rahman Nizami,Ali Ahsan Mujaheed — now in prison,even rose to being ministers in Bangladesh’s governments.

The writer is executive editor,‘The Daily Star’,Dhaka