Top BNP leader faces arrest for targeting Hindus

CHITTAGONG - A top opposition leader may be arrested in Bangladesh for his alleged role in targeting members of the minority Hindu community in and around this port town during the 1971 freedom movement, a media report said Sunday.

Several witnesses appearing before an investigation team named Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, a lawmaker and a member of the standing committee of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), for escorting Pakistan Army personnel to the Hindu homes.

Chowdhury, believed to be close to former prime minister and BNP chief Khaleda Zia, has denied the charges. If arrested, he would be the first from the main opposition to be directly implicated.

At least 107 Hindus were killed and their homes destroyed April 13, 1971 in three villages of Raojan sub-district near here, bdnews24.com, a newspaper website, reported after a team of seven investigators visited the spots where the killings took place.

The investigators are part of Bangladesh’s International War Crimes Tribunal that is preparing to conduct trial of those who targeted unarmed civilians in the run-up to the movement at the end of which Bangladesh emerged in December 1971.

Tribunal prosecutor Zeyad Al Malum, one of the seven members, Saturday said: “We’ve got information about the involvement of Fazlul Quader Chowdhury’s family, his son Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Jamaat leader Mir Kashem Ali with war crimes.”

Fazlul Quader, a former chief of the Pakistan Muslim League, was for united Pakistan and against the freedom movement. He is one of the thousands accused of “war crimes” who are no more.

Asked if Salahuddin Quader and Mir Kashem will be arrested, he told media: “The measures against them will be similar to what the five others faced.”

Salahuddin has denied the charges saying he had left for Pakistan a week before the incidents. He has also warned of breach in “communal harmony” if he is implicated in “war crimes”.

Five top leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamist party — its chief Matiur Rahman Nizami, secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, executive council member Delwar Hossain Sayedee, assistant secretaries General Mohammad Kamaruzzaman and Abdul Quader Molla — are in jail currently facing trial in the International Crimes Tribunal.

The tribunal’s prosecution chief Golam Arif Tipu said: “We are satisfied with what we’ve got in Chittagong.”