Nizami's blank gaze

Motiur Rahman Nizami, whose atrocities shook Bengalees fighting for freedom four decades ago, was speechless and wore a blank look after Bangladesh’s first war crimes tribunal sentenced him to death.

The International Crimes Tribunal-1 sentenced the Jamaat-e-Islami chief, who had flaunted the national flag on his car’s bonnet after becoming a minister only a decade ago, to hang until death for the crimes against humanity he committed during the 1971 Liberation War.

The three-member special court said in the unanimous verdict that eight of the 16 charges, including spearheading the execution of intellectuals, mass killing, rape and loot, levelled against the 71-year old had been proven.

Nizami did not stand or say a word after the judges finished reading the summary of the 204-page verdict. He gazed blankly at the judges.

The Jamaat chief, already carrying a death sentence in the 2004 Chittagong 10-truck arms haul cases, was brought to Dhaka from Gazipur's Kahsimpur Central Jail on Tuesday night and taken to the tribunal on Wednesday morning.

There he was kept in the lockup for more than one and a half hours.

Nizami sat forlorn in the court’s lockup cell. With his trademark Jinnah cap and clad in a white kurta, he looked about bewildered most of the time.

He was taken to the courtroom at 11am and was seated on a chair in the dock.

Nizami, who led Pakistan occupation army’s vigilante militia outfit Al-Badr that carried out a systematic plan to torture and execute pro-liberation elements, sat and look at his wristwatch.

Several minutes later, ICT-1 Chairman Justice M Enayetur Rahim and two other judges Jahangir Hossain and Mohammad Anwarul Haque walked in the courtroom.

Nizami took off his Jinnah cap, leaned back and sat relaxed as Justice Rahim began with preliminary remarks. Soon, he closed his eyes too as he relaxed.

Justice Haque read out the verdict's introduction and the charges while Justice Hossain read the observations.

Nizami, chief of Jamaat's erstwhile student wing Islami Chhatra Sangha during 1971, kept his eyes closed the next one hour and 15 minutes - the time tribunal judges took to read the verdict.

After the four-party alliance headed by the BNP came to power in 2001, Nizami was appointed as agriculture minister. Later he was made industries minister.

Regarding that, the tribunal in an observation said, "It is very much hard to believe that a person, who actively opposed the very Liberation War of Bangladesh, was appointed as a Minister of the Republic."

“We are led to observe that the appointment of the accused as a Minister, by the then government, who happened to be an anti-liberation leader, was a great blunder as well as a clear slap on the face of the Liberation War as well as three million martyrs and two lakh women who sacrificed their chastity for the Liberation of Bangladesh,” it further said.

“This shameful act was disgraceful for the nation as a whole,” the tribunal added.

However, Nizami opened his eyes after the tribunal sentenced him to hang until death. No strong reactions came from the Jamaat chief as he looked around with vacant eyes.

The dock in the courtroom Nizami was in was surrounded by police. After the verdict was delivered, he was taken back to the lockup.

Then he was seen eating some food his family sent. His defence lawyers including Tajul Islam met him at the time.

Following court directives, Nizami was brought out of the lockup around 3pm and police got him into a prison van to take him back to Dhaka Central Jail.

That moment, he was still wearing that blank look mixed with sadness and apathy.

Among the Jamaat top leaders who were convicted on war crimes, Delwar Hossain Sayedee was the one who gave the strongest reaction so far after hearing his verdict.

Sayedee, after the verdict on Feb 28 last year, had stood up as soon as the judges had sentenced him to death.

Addressing the judges, Sayedee began to say, “You have not remained true to your conscience and oath.”

He said that the judges had only read out judgement that suited the demands of ‘a bunch of atheists and infidels at Shahbagh’.

Sayedee continued to speak but the prosecution side of the courtroom ironically erupted with ‘Tui Razakar!’ – meaning ‘You are Razakar!’ – made famous in one of Humayun Ahmed’s landmark television drama serials.