DR. ALI AL-GHAMDI I have written several articles in this newspaper about the war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh. In those articles, I have pinpointed the shortcomings and defects of the trials being conducted by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in Bangladesh. I am not the only person who has written about this. There are many writers, journalists and intellectuals who have also dealt with this issue. All of them have cited the reports, decisions and recommendations issued by international and local human rights and legislative bodies such as the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the British House of Lords. In their reports, these organizations have criticized the ICT, and its way of handling cases and style of functioning, the fabrication of the testimony of witnesses, and the modus operandi in delivering verdicts. All these violations of legal and ethical principles have indicated that the ICT is highly politicized. I would not be writing again about the ICT if one person, namely Pritom Das, had not written a lengthy article which was published in an online newspaper. In that article, titled “Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi: Luxury of lies", he blamed me for "twisting history and strangling truth". Although many other articles similar to mine have been written criticizing the tribunal, I do not know if Mr. Das has seen them or if he has only read the article that I wrote. I do not want to engage in a quarrel with Mr. Das or become involved in all the lies in his lengthy article, which is not only monotonous, but also lacks any logic and objectivity. However, I would like to address a number of these cheap lies. The biggest lie, which Mr. Das tries to establish repeatedly, is calling this tribunal an International War Crimes Tribunal even though it is a local court, which was established more than 40 years after abandoning a law to try war crimes allegedly committed by a number of Pakistani soldiers who were taken by India as prisoners of war. All of these army men were released as an outcome of talks held between Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his Indian counterpart Indira Gandhi. Those who are now facing a war crimes trial were not among those who were accused of the crime at that time. They were also not detained by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh, who ruled the country from 1972 until his assassination in 1975. Moreover, they were neither detained nor were any charges framed against them by Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who first governed from 1996 to 2002. On the other hand, they were partners in the election campaign that led to the victory and formation of government by Sheikh Hasina. How can this tribunal be called an international one when it was not formed on the basis of any international law? Apart from this, the tribunal violates all fundamental principles of international law as well as local law. International lawyers were not permitted to enter the country so as to follow the trial proceedings. The renowned international lawyer Toby Cadman described the tribunal as a mysterious court, which is neither international nor local. The second lie is that Pritom Das compares the Bangladesh tribunal with the International War Crimes Tribunals established in Yugoslavia, Cambodia and Rwanda. He forgets or pretends to have forgotten the fact that all these tribunals were recognized by the United Nations and the international community, and that there are international lawyers and judges serving in these tribunals. Another lie is his statement that there was nothing unusual in the Skype scandal which was given wide coverage in the international media and which led to the resignation of the presiding judge of the Bangladesh tribunal. The scandal exposed the existence of a clandestine understanding between the government and the tribunal when the presiding judge received orders from a Bangladeshi expatriate lawyer based in Europe who supports the government and is a party to the attempts to eliminate the government's political rivals. The fourth lie was that the Pakistani soldiers who were accused of war crimes were transferred to the custody of Pakistan and that Pakistan was responsible for bringing them to justice. I do not know of anyone who will believe this argument because Pakistan at that time was involved in a civil war that subsequently led to a war with India. Pakistan was defeated in the war and its soldiers who surrendered were taken to India as prisoners of war. As I mentioned earlier, high level talks paved the way for their return to Pakistan, and these soldiers included many who were accused of committing war crimes in Bangladesh. In another lie, the writer considers the kidnapping of the defense witness Sukh Ranjan Bali as merely the protecting of secrets by judges in their capacity as custodians of the secrets of the court. Bali's testimony was fabricated as a prosecution witness and he wanted to return to court to officially deny the testimony that he had given. However, he failed to do so as he was kidnapped when he arrived at the door of the court. In his sixth lie, Pritom Das considered my article to be a deliberate attempt to spread propaganda against the tribunal as well as to obstruct justice. However, it is unclear to me if justice is actually taking place. Is it justice to issue a death sentence by a panel of three judges who never heard the testimony of any witnesses. Two of these judges were appointed after resignation of the two following the Skype scandal. The publishing of any report on the scandal was banned in Bangladesh and Mahmoud Al-Rahman, a brilliant journalist who dared to publish such reports, is now behind bars and his newspaper has been closed. I think this is enough to disprove the misleading and cheap lies of Pritom Das and I will shed more light on this issue in another article. — Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs. He can be reached at [email protected]
