The War Crimes Tribunal has issued arrest warrants for the 4 senior Jamaat leaders already in government custody. The charges: committing genocide and crimes against humanity and peace during the 1971 War of Liberation. The leaders wanted in connection with the crimes: none other than Motiur Rahman Nizami, the Jamaat-e-Islam chief and his Secretary General, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and two lower ranking assistant secretaries general. Nizami and Mujahid are widely known to have been leaders in the Al Badr brigade, the militia that has been thought squarely responsible of murder and slaughter of a large number of young and promising intellectuals.
This is a very important move. These are the first charges brought against persons and citizens of Bangladesh for crimes committed under the International Crimes Tribunal Act of 1973. This act brought about a legal procedure to prosecute war criminal but was never used to in court. Decades of maneuvering and indemnity saw to that.
The sitting Awami League government returned to power in 2008 in no small measure from its promise to use just that law to prosecute those held responsible for collaborating with the (West) Pakistani military to commit murder and rape, destroy lives, unleash crashing waves of public and private torment.
Mr. Golam Arif Tipu, the lead prosecutor in the trial, claimed it a red-letter day, reports the Indian, Daily, the Statesman:
“It appeared that the four are crucially needed to be kept in confinement as the special investigation agency has already gathered evidence against the four. They were found to be involved in gruesome crimes like genocide, killing, torture, arson and forcing exodus during the Liberation War,” , claimed Mr. Tipu.
The arrests are a signal achievement. They come tantalizing close to pointing an accusing finger at Pakistan’s political and military establishment. Consider that exiled former President Pervez Musharraf was an Army officer in 1971, employed no doubt to fight India, but surely convinced that he was on the right side of genocide.