Government is initiating steps to bring back home BNP Senior Vice-chairman Tarique Rahman and his younger brother Arafat Rahman Coco for trial as they have been indicted on money laundering charges.
Published : 09 Apr 2014, 08:07 PM
This was hinted by Law Minister Anisul Huq on Wednesday.
He said that efforts were also on to bring back home the absconding killers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to “absolve the nation of the stigma at least to some extent.”
The law minister said this while talking to journalists at his Secretariat office after the first meeting of the 10-member high-powered taskforce formed to bring back all fugitives, staying in different foreign countries, to stand trial.
The government could do little for the extradition of six fugitive convicts after the Supreme Court on Nov 19, 2009, upheld the death sentence of 12 self-confessed killers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
They are beyond the reach of law of this land despite diplomatic initiatives.
Of the six fugitive convicts, MA Rashed Chowdhury has been staying at Los Angeles in US while Nur Chowdhury is staying in Canada and Khandaker Abdur Rashid in Libya.
The government has no specific information about their whereabouts. It has also no clue whether Shariful Haque Dalim, Moslehuddin Khan and Abdul Mazed have already died.
War crimes convict Abul Kalam Azad, widely known as Bachchu Razakar, fled the country last year. He is believed to have fled either to India or Pakistan.
On Nov 4, 2013, absconding Al-Badr bosses Md Ashrafuzzaman Khan alias Nayeb Ali and Chowdhury Mueenuddin were sentenced to death by an International Crimes Tribunal for abducting and killing intellectuals at the fag- end of the country’s Liberation War in 1971.
Trying him in absentia, a Dhaka court on June 23, 2011, sentenced Arafat Rahman Coco, the younger son of former Prime Minister and BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, to six years' rigorous imprisonment. It also fined him around Tk 390 million and ordered to confiscate the money he laundered.
Coco is currently staying in Thailand. His elder brother and Senior BNP Vice Chairman Tarique Rahman has several graft cases filed against him.