TAHER TRIAL'Zia, Sattar, Sayem masterminds'

Maj Gen (retd) Nurul Islam Shishu tells court that Zia, Sattar and Sayem had been behind Col Taher's court martial.

Dhaka, Feb 13 (bdnews24.com) — A former major general has said Ziaur Rahman, Abdus Sattar and Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem had planned the court martial of Col Taher in 1976.

"Then president Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem, army chief Ziaur Rahman and justice Abdus Sattar (later president) set the trial process after negotiations with the law ministry," Maj Gen Nurul Islam Shishu (retd) told the High Court on Sunday.

Shishu, now living in the US, said this in an emailed statement presented before the bench of justices Shamsuddin Chowdhury and Sheikh Zakir Hossain through his counsel Barrister Rafiqul Haque.

He has been exempted from physical appearance at the court following a plea on the ground of his 'prolonged illness and treatment'.

"I was completely unaware of the process of the secret trial of Col Taher in 1976," said Shishu, who was the defence attaché at the Bangladesh Embassy in Myanmar and later made the adjutant general of the Army.

He claimed: "Like many others in the Army I knew nothing about the trial. I didn't see any process of the [secret] trial before and after that ... rather I have been able to come to know many things about it from the ongoing proceedings in the court."

A copy of his statement was also sent to the foreign ministry through the Bangladesh Embassy in Washington.

The court summoned Shishu to hear statement from him in connection with a writ petition filed challenging the legality of the secret trial of Col Taher.

Col Abu Taher, commander of sector-11 during the Liberation War, was executed on July 21, 1976 as the secret military court convicted 17 people, including Taher, four days back.

Then army chief Ziaur Rahman, who later became president and founded BNP, was also the Chief Martial Law Administrator of the country during the trial.

A writ petition, challenging the legality of the secret trial, was filed on Aug 22 last year jointly by Taher's wife Lutfa Taher, Taher's brother Anwar Hossain; and Fatema Yousuf, wife of Yousuf Ali Khan, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the trial.

The High Court ordered the government to explain why the 1976 tribunal that had tried and convicted Col Abu Taher should not be declared illegal.

The court also sought statement from Lawrence Lifschultz, a former journalist of the Far Eastern Economic Review in this connection.

Lifschultz said Col Taher was put on trial violating all the legal and constitutional regulations. He said Taher was a victim to 'Ziaur Rahman's pre-meditation'.

Two more writ petitions were also filed challenging the trial.

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