Report on Yusuf ready for submission

War crimes investigators are set to submit their report against Jamaat-e-Islami leader A K M Yousuf, who allegedly founded the notorious Razakar in Khulna.

According to the investigation officer, Mohammad Helal Uddin, this 84-year Jamaat leader who also temporarily headed the party, was the one who “virtually coined the word Razakar” in Bangladesh’s context.

Also the investigator in Jamaat leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee’s war crimes case, Helal Uddin said that Yousuf established the vigilante unit on his own initiative. “The government later recognised it as an auxiliary force.”

He told the press on Monday that it was Yousuf, Jamaat’s head of Khulna region, and already a former MP and the party’s provincial joint secretary, who trained 96 Jamaat men as Razakars in Khulna’s paramilitary camp.

The vigilant militia group Razakar — which has become synonymous with ‘collaborator’ in Bengali — is said to have abetted the Pakistani military junta during the 1971 Liberation War and committed widespread crimes against humanity.

The investigation found 15 charges against Yousuf, currently a Jamaat vice president, including murder, genocide, loot, arson, forced conversion and deportation. He is also very likely to be charged for his superior position with command responsibility.

When asked, head of the investigation agency Abdul Hannan Khan said they presumed that Yousuf was living in Bangladesh. According to the investigator, Yousuf was charged under the 1972 Collaborator’s Order. “He was released from jail only after the law was repealed.”

The investigator could not remember the details of when Yousuf was freed from jail.

Helal Uddin began his investigation on Jan 22, 2012 and completed it on Apr 21, 2013. Helal Uddin was at the stand for almost 60 days as Sayedee’s investigator in the course of four months. His cross-examination lasted for 50 days.

An assistant superintendent of police, Helal Uddin had submitted Bangladesh’s founding President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s family album and his historic speech of Mar 7, 1971 as evidence of Sayedee’s war crimes. The speech was later shown to have been edited and did not correspond with the version attached to the constitution.

When asked if he would submit such evidence again in the Yousuf case, the lead investigator said, “There is little possibility of that happening.”

Of the 20 charges against Sayedee, only eight were proven. Not a single charge of genocide was proven. When asked if it was a weakness of his investigation Helal Uddin told bdnews24.com, “Not at all. There was no weakness at all.”

The investigator had failed to answer questions about the origins of a number of his exhibits including television reports from the American television stations like the NBC and CBS.

The investigator also failed to establish that Bangabandhu’s fiery words in his exhibit and that of the constitution did not correspond which was so embarrassing that he even faced the wrath of the tribunal judges.

In charge of public works, power, revenue and irrigation in the infamous Malek cabinet, a dummy government during the Liberation War, A K M Yousuf joined Jamaat-e-Islami in 1952 and became the Khulna’s regional head within five years.

Yousuf was nominated as the joint secretary of Jamaat’s East Pakistan unit and became the party’s deputy chief in 1971.