On January 28 this year the Bangladesh government executed five out of 12 criminals convicted of the murder of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,the father of the nation. The case stands as one of the most significant landmarks in the judicial and political history of Bangladesh. Mujib was brutally killed on August 15,1975 with most of his family members,by some disgruntled army officers that toppled his government; the subsequent short-lived military-backed government passed the infamous Indemnity Act preventing any trial of the army officers.
Due to this Act no legal case was filed with the police and so all the subsequent governments until 1996 could avoid legal responsibility. The government of Sheikh Hasina,one of the two surviving daughters of Mujib,repealed the Indemnity Act in 1996 and proceeded towards a trial. Following a police case filing in October that year,some 21 years after the killing,the police arrested the executed five while some others remained at large abroad. After a two-year trial,the High Court found 15 of the 19 accused guilty and issued a death sentence and in response to an appeal,the Court in 2001 upheld the verdict for 12 out of the 15 convicted. After a long pause,the convicted five in prison made another appeal to the Court against the verdict but lost the legal battle on November 19,2009. Subsequent review petitions and a clemency appeal were also rejected,culminating in the execution of the five under custody. The end of the trial is a watershed in the history of the nation.
Fourth,the trial is a legal verdict implying that regime change in undemocratic and unconstitutional ways will not be left unaccounted for. It will strengthen democratic institution-building by upholding the rule of law. Fifth,it signals that the armed forces are not beyond judicial purview if they interfere with elected civilian governments. Indeed,popular resistance to the army-backed caretaker government of Iajuddin Ahammad in the recent past is indicative of disapproval of military involvement in politics,and the successful trial is likely to reinforce the disapproval further. And finally,the case is likely to augment accountability of the elected government to the electorate as the current Awami League government came to power with a mandate to complete the trial that it started in its earlier term.
However,there are also significant questions to be asked. First,can the current government overcome narrow party politics and be objective enough in dealing with other infamous political killings? The trial of the Mujib murder case was legally impossible due to the Indemnity Act but that legal impediment also served as an excuse for the lack of political will by the Zia,Ershad and Khaleda governments. That failure of will divided the nation on major national issues almost permanently. The Hasina government needs to take a further step,and go beyond partisan interests at least in dealing with crimes of this magnitude. Second,are the governments hands clean in terms of ensuring an unbiased trial? Some observers believe that the Hasina governments handling of the case made it merely about a party agenda,with the government determined to hang the convicted criminals. Allegations that the interior ministry blocked a clemency appeal from reaching the presidents office are problematic. Yet,in the end,the government should be praised for taking a bold step forward for democratic accountability.
The writer is assistant professor at the Department of Political Science,International Islamic University,Malaysia
