‘Zia staged trial to kill Col Taher’

The military tribunal which conducted the trial of Col Abu Taher had sentenced him to death as per Ziaur Rahman’s plan, the High Court in its full verdict which declared the trial illegal said.

Justices AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury and Sheikh Md Zakir Hossain had delivered the verdict on Mar 22, 2011. The judgement in full was published on Monday after the judges signed it.

The court, in the summary verdict, had said execution of Taher, who was a sector commander during the 1971 Liberation War, was a ‘cold-blooded murder’ given the nature of the trial conducted as per Gen Ziaur Rahman's plan.

It ordered Taher be ‘considered a martyr’ and a murder case be filed against the judge of the military tribunal, who had ordered his hanging.

As Ziaur Rahman is not alive to be accused in the murder case, his associates who were involved in Taher’s murder and are alive must be accused, the court said.

The family of Abu Taher has expressed satisfaction with the High Court verdict. The younger brother of Col Abu Taher, Prof M Anwar Hossain has called for a judicial investigation into the ‘killings’ that took place during the regime of former military ruler Gen Ziaur Rahman.

On Aug 23, 2010, Taher's wife Lutfa Taher, Anwar Hossain, currently the Vice Chancellor of Jahangirnagar University, and Flight Sergeant Abu Yusuf Khan’s wife Fatema Yusuf jointly filed a petition at the High Court challenging the legality of the court martial.

Later, three more petitions were filed over the matter and the court delivered a verdict on the four pleas. The court asked authorities to consider giving compensations to those who had been punished in the trial.

The court also ordered the government to investigte whether Ziaur Rahman had any connection with the murder of independence architect Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Terming the entire trial a ‘drama’, the High Court had declared the formation of the kangaroo court, the process of the trial and the punishments illegal and invalid.

The court said sentencing Col Taher to death was murder because Ziaur Rahman had decided to hand down death penalty to him long before he constituted the court.

Bangladesh saw a spell of military uprising and counter-uprising after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members on Aug 15, 1975. On Nov 7, 1975, Taher orchestrated a socialist uprising amongst the soldiers and freed the then army chief Ziaur Rahman from house arrest.

He also fuelled Zia's consolidation of power as Deputy Chief Martial Law Administrator. However, Taher was arrested only 17 days after the takeover. A total of 33 people, including him, were tried in a secret court martial.

Of them 16 were released, while 17 were handed down a variety of sentences. The tribunal had sentenced to death two sector commanders, Taher and Major MA Jalil, and Taher’s brother Abu Yusuf. Verdicts of Jalil and Yusuf were later reduced to life sentences for their ‘special contribution’ during the Liberation War.

Four days after the military court order, Taher was hanged on July 21, 1976.

The High Court in its verdict said the military tribunal had started the so-called trials right from the following day the military provision was enforced.

It said it was clear after the verdict on the case over the Fifth and Seventh Amendments to teh Constitution that the military court which conducted this trial had no judicial jurisdiction.

One of the most significant matters in Taher murder case verdict was taking into consideration writings of Lawrence Lifschultz, a former South Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, who had been in Dhaka during Taher's trial in 1976, and senior BNP leader Moudud Ahmed’s book.

Mentioning Moudud’s book ‘Democracy and Challenge of Development: A Study of Political and Military Intervention in Bangladesh’, the verdict said the writer quite easily depicted that Gen Zia had decided to lead Taher to the gallows long before setting up the tribunal only to pander to the military officials back from Pakistan.

Moudud was close to Ziaur Rahman and he claimed in the book to have heard this from Zia himself, so there was no reason to doubt him, the court said.

Earlier, Moudud, also a former Law Minister, was asked about his writings at one time during the hearing of the case.

“He acknowledged that he is the writer of this statement and this book, and he heard this directly from General Zia,” the court said.

However, Lifschultz, SM Shawkat Ali, the then Deputy Magistrate of Dhaka, and current DC Mohammad Mohibul Haque had recorded their statements in the court earlier. In addition, Maj Gen (retd) Nurul Islam Shishu sent his written statement from the US.

From their statements, written statement of journalist Syed Badrul Ahsan, and opinions from senior lawyers present in the courtroom, the court came to its decision that ‘Ziaur Rahman is the key accused in the Col Taher murder case’.

The judgement also said the accused would not get any lawyers and any chance for self-defence and there would not be any cross-examination of the witnesses.

“The trial [of Taher] was held in the dark room of the jail. No documents were presented before the other members of the tribunal. The charges were not supposed to be taken into cognisance. Overall, the procedures of a criminal case which are mandatory were not followed in this case.”

The court also mentioned another major issue in the murder case -- all the case documents including the FIR, chargesheet and copy of the tribunal’s verdict disappearing into thin air.

In the 198-page verdict, the court also mentioned several historical sides while declaring Col Taher as a valiant freedom fighter and pride of the nation.

The writ petitions were lodged to challenge the legality of the court martial.

The court asked the government to dub the death penalty of Taher as murder and take out the names of the petitioners from the list of the accused. It also ordered the authorities to consider giving compensations and facilities to those who had been punished.

The verdict mentioned some lines from late Humayun Ahmed’s last novel, later published as a book titled Deyal.

The court heard the opinions of a number of lawyers as amici curiae during the hearing on the writ petitions. Those lawyers were Kamal Hossain, M Amir-Ul Islam, M Zahir, Yusuf Hossain Humayun, Akhtar Imam, AFM Mejbahuddin, Abdul Matin Khasru, ZI Khan Panna, MI Farooque, Rokanuddin Mahmud and Shahdeen Malik.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam and Additional Attorney General MK Rahman argued for the state in the case.