All involved in jail killing will be tried: Ashraf

Dhaka, Nov 3 (bdnews24.com)—All those involved in the brutal murder of the four national leaders and those who are trying to save them now, would be brought to trial, LGRD minister and Awami League leader Syed Ashraful Islam has said.

Ashraf was talking to reporters after paying tributes to the wartime heroes and placing wreaths at their graves at the capital's Banani on the occasion of jail killing day on Wednesday.

On this day in 1975, four leaders of the wartime national government—acting president of Bangladesh Syed Nazrul Islam, prime minister Tajuddin Ahmed and cabinet ministers M Mansur Ali and AHM Qamruzzaman—were killed inside Dhaka Central Jail.

The assassins, believed to be the mastermind of the 1975 coup, gunned down the four leaders, just three months after murdering Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members on August 15, 1975.

Pointing an accusing finger at Ziaur Rahman—the founder of BNP and a former president, as the mastermind of the jail killing, the local government minister said, "Later his wife Khaleda Zia tried hard to protect the murderers."

"Those who have committed the murders and those who have instigated and saved them will be brought to justice," he said.

The armed assassins had stormed Dhaka Central Jail on November 3 1975 and ruthlessly shot dead the four national leaders during that murky period of the country's history.

The Awami League government had revived the trial of the jail killings case after it came to power in 1996.

But the trial went through hiccups while the High Court on October 20, 2004, during the tenure of the BNP-Jamaat alliance government, handed down a verdict, sentencing 15 of the 20 accused.

Appeals on the verdict are still pending before the court.

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