Khokon Razakar trial ordered

Justice ATM Fazle Kabir-led International Crimes Tribunal-1 on Wednesday fixed Sep 4 for framing charges.

The tribunal had earlier taken cognisance of charges against Khokan and issued an arrest warrant.

Prosecutor Mokhlesur Rahman Badal had said 11 charges, including murder, genocide, arson, rape, loot and forcible religious conversion, have been levelled against the accused.

The BNP leader has gone into hiding since the war crimes investigators started their probe.

“Zahid Hossain alias Khokon Razakar is a self-proclaimed collaborator of the Pakistan army who had said, ‘I was a Razakar, still am, and want to die as a Razakar,’” Badal had said.

The freedom fighters had fought a battle with the Pakistan army and its local collaborators on May 29, 1971, at Chander Haat in Faridpur. Khokan’s brother ‘Zafar’, also a collaborator, was killed in that battle. He became the chief of Nagarkanda Razakar unit after that. The prosecution submitted the charges on June 23 along with a plea for a warrant of arrest. According to the tribunal investigators, Khokon Razakar had campaigned for Jamaat-e-Islami in the 1970 national elections. After independence, he joined the BNP and became the Vice-President of the Nagarkanda BNP unit. He was elected mayor to the Nagarkanda Municipality in 2011 and had been absconding since taking oath. Probes against him started on Apr 16 last year.