No progress in bringing killers back
There has been more rhetoric than tangible progress in bringing back the self-confessed killers of Bangabandhu over the past five and a half years. The whereabouts of two of them are known, but their return is enmeshed in diplomatic and legal tangles. Yet there is a special taskforce in this regard, foreign legal consultants have been appointed and the concerned officials have made innumerable visits abroad.
The government has said that the US and Canada have not responded positively to the repeated requests to return two of the six condemned killers. On condition of anonymity, several Bangladeshi diplomats in Washington and Ottawa recently admitted to Prothom Alo that there has been more rhetoric than initiative in bringing back SHBM Nur Chowdhury from Canada and AM Rashed Chowdhury from Washington.
The task force assigned to this task, headed by the Law Minister, has no apparent activity the year round. It is supposed to hold meetings every three months, but this is not done regularly. Only when National Mourning Day August 15 comes around, then a meeting is hurriedly called. The task force was supposed to meet yesterday, Thursday, but the inter-ministerial meeting was finally cancelled due to the absence of two ministers.
Former Bangladesh High Commissioner to Canada Yakub Ali recently told Prothom Alo that in a letter of May 31, 2010, the previous Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has clearly told Dipu Moni, Bangladesh's Foreign Minister at the time, that it would not be possible to extradite SHBM Nur Chowdhury.
Bangladesh's former ambassador to the US, Akramul Kader, yesterday said that the US Department of Justice, Homeland and Border Security and Interpol have been contacted regularly over the past five years regarding the extradition of AM Rashed Chowdhury from the US. Officials at various levels in these offices have advised that the US State Department be contacted in this regard. They claim not to know his whereabouts.
In the meantime, Law Minister Anisul Huq yesterday told Prothom Alo that the task force will hold a meeting shortly. He said, "The government is committed to bringing back the killers, but we are having to go against the tide." He said that they were maintaining secrecy in this regard due to the security issues involved.
Other than these two killers, the government has no specific information about the remaining four. The government claims that Abdul Majed and Moslem Uddin are hiding in India. India had been requested to extradite them.
Unconfirmed sources say that Khandakar Abdur Rashid basically resides in Benghazi, Libya and Pakistan. Shariful Huq Dalim has business in Kenya but sometimes travels to Europe and Libya.