Killing of Pirojpur Magistrate, 2 others
Sayedee was involved
Witness tells war crimes tribunal
The 27th prosecution witness yesterday told the International Crimes Tribunal that Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee was directly involved in killing his [witness'] brother and two others during the Liberation War.
Saif Hafizur Rahman, 65, a lawmaker elected in 1986 and 1988 and also the current Narail bar association president, told the tribunal that his brother Saif Mizanur Rahman, then Pirojpur district magistrate, was picked up by Pakistani occupation army on May 5, 1971.
According to a then Pakistan collaborator, Sayedee was in the car that took away Mizanur Rahman, said the witness.
Then sub-divisional police officer Faizur Rahman and acting sub-divisional officer Abdur Razzaque were the other two picked up by the occupation army that day, he added.
The three were murdered on the bank of the Baleshwar River, Hafizur said, adding that he heard of the incident from Khan Bahadur Syed Mohammad Afzal, the aforementioned collaborator of the Pakistan army.
The three-member tribunal led by its chairman Justice Md Nizamul Huq yesterday finished recording the deposition and cross-examination of Hafizur Rahman.
Sayedee was present at the court throughout the proceedings. He spent much of his time reading a book.
The Jamaat nayeb-e-ameer is among the six Jamaat and two BNP leaders facing the charge of crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971.
The witness said after receiving the news of the murder, he along with his father and sister went to see Afzal and learned from him what happened to Mizanur Rahman.
“Afzal saheb said my brother was arrested for helping freedom fighters and giving them arms from the armoury,” said Hafizur Rahman, adding, “Before he was killed, he was asked to say 'Pakistan Zindabad' [long live Pakistan], but instead my brother said 'Joy Bangla'.”
The three detainees were first stabbed with bayonets and then shot, Hafizur continued, “Their bodies were disposed of in the river.”
According to the witness, he also learned from Afzal that Sayedee was directly involved in killing, raping, looting and acts of arson in Pirojpur in 1971.
After the deposition, defence counsel Mizanul Islam began cross-examining the witness.
Answering to different questions, the witness said he had twice been elected as a lawmaker during Ershad rule and is now serving as the vice president of Narail district unit Awami League.
He also told the tribunal that he did not file any case regarding his brother's murder.
At one point the defence counsel asked him whether he had made his bar association pass a resolution that barred its members to fight a case against him on behalf of local indigenous community.
The witness said it was not true.
When pointed out that such a report was published in a popular Bangla daily on July 26, 2009, he said he had sent a rejoinder denying the allegation but it was not printed.
The witness also said he did not initiate any legal proceedings against the newspaper although it had also brought an allegation against him of forging documents of a disputed property in the same report.
Another defence counsel Manjur Ahmed Ansari later took over the cross-examination and suggested that Hafizur Rahman had joined Awami League to get elected as a lawmaker again and that he gave false statement in a false case against the Jamaat leader as the central leaders of Awami League had asked him to do so.
The witness said it was not true.
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