Rashomon Phenomenon & Murder of Major General Manzur (Part III)
(IV) Charges & Threats
On June 27, 1995, Abdul Kahar Akand, Assistant Superintendent of Police of the Criminal Investigation Department filed charges against General H.M. Ershad and four others. They were Major (Rtd) Kazi Emdadul Haque (aka Captain Emdad), Lt. Colonel (Rtd) Mostafa Kamaluddin Bhuyain (aka Major Kamal), Major General (Rtd) Abdul Latif and Lt. Colonel (Rtd) Shamsur Rahman Shams.
Major General Abdul Latif was included among those charged based apparently on the testimony given to the CID by the Deputy Police Commissioner at the Headquarters of the Chittagong Metropolitan Police in 1981. In his testimony to the CID, Deputy Police Commissioner stated the following:
“. . .We were informed that General Manzur and his companions had been taken [by the police] to Hathazari Thana. Around 9 pm I called Brigadier Aziz, Commandant of the East Bengal Regimental Center [EBRC] at the direction of the Commissioner of the Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) to verify the identity of the army officer sent from the Cantonment to the Hathazari police station. He informed me that he [Brigadier Aziz] and Brigadier Latif had sent Captain Emdad to Hathazari at the direction of the Army Chief [General Ershad] to take into custody the arrested army officers [General Manzur was accompanied by other army officers.] He asked that General Manzur and others be handed over to him [Brigadier Aziz]. After I reported this to the Commissioner, he informed the SP Chittagong and the DIG Chittagong Range over the wireless accordingly.” (Emphasis added)
This testimony is of significance because the Deputy Police Commissioner (DPC) identified certain critical links in the “Chain-of-Command” for that night’s “special operation”. Following General Manzur’s arrest by the police, Brigadier Aziz was temporarily placed in charge of the Chittagong Cantonment. According to DPC’s
testimony to the CID, Brigadier Aziz informed DPC that the military unit under Captain Emdad’s command which was either heading toward or had already arrived at the Hathazari police station to take Manzur into custody was doing so under his [Brigadier Aziz’s] and Brigadier Latif’s [later Major-General Abul Latif] authority and that they were acting under “the direction of the Army Chief (Lt. General Ershad]”.
Apparently, based on DPC’s testimony and other evidence Aminul Haque and the CID had in their possession, Brigadier Latif was also charged. (Not long after General Ershad’s take over in 1981, Major-General Abul Latif would be appointed Chief of Army Intelligence. In 1995 he would be charged as one of the co-accused in the Manzur Murder Case.)
According to all accounts, Manzur had only hours left to live once the handover was completed. According to the testimony of Subedar #1, Captain Emdad had told him and his fellow solders that this was an operation in which they would have to kill General Manzur that very night once they had him in military custody. They were under orders from the “military top brass”.
Based on all the testimonies we have reviewed and other evidence in their possession, the Attorney General, Aminul Haque, and the CID decided to press charges against these five men (Ershad, Emdad, Kamal, Latif and Shams) for the murder of Major General Abdul Manzur.
During the first weeks when I began to carefully study the details of this case, I could not explain why these five men had specifically been charged. What evidence tied them together?
After 19 years, 23 judges and countless prosecutors the thread that connected these men to Manzur’s death had vanished from view. People simply didn’t know. Prominent lawyers and journalists I asked in Dhaka were in the dark. They did not know the answer to these questions: “Why these five military officers? Why had these four officers been charged alongside Ershad?”
The answer is found in the testimonies of the five soldiers and Deputy Commissioner of Police that the Attorney General, Aminul Haque, and the CID gathered in 1995.
These five men are the original co-accused of the “Manzur Murder Case”. This is why three of them (Ershad, Emdad and Kamal) sit beside each other during Court hearings. For reasons we have not yet ascertained the High Court several years ago stayed the trial proceedings against Major General Abdul Latif and Lt. Colonel Shamsur Rahman. This stay and other curiosities are among the ongoing mysteries that surround the judicial administration of this case over the past 19 years.
On February 27th the Court in the Manzur Murder Case reconvened and was told by the Special Public Prosecutor Asaduzzaman Khan Rochi that there were “some flaws in the charge sheet” and the “probe is incomplete”. This is quite a remarkable statement after nearly twenty years. How long does it take to complete a probe? Another ten years?
For reasons the Prosecutor did not explain the names of some vital witnesses had been dropped. One source claimed to this correspondent that both Air Vice Marshal Sadruddin’s and IGP Kibria’s had never been called before the Court to testify despite the crucial nature of the testimony they had given to the CID implicating General Ershad in the murder of General Manzur. Had their names been dropped from the witness list?
If this is true, what has happened appears to be a novel, indeed innovative, form of witness tampering. Someone simply arranged to have the witness names “disappear” from the witness list. (It would be interesting to know in what year and under whose specific jurisdiction the names of critical witnesses were carefully and discreetly removed from the witness list.) After twenty years who would notice if the names of the most important witnesses simply disappeared? How did this happen? Were inducements of any type used to accomplish this task?
In Court, on February 27th, Judge Firoz, the twenty-third judge in nineteen years, to be placed “in charge” of the Manzur case found these revelations by the Special Prosecutor to be not only somewhat awkward but perhaps astonishing. Judge Firoz ordered the case to be reinvestigated and also ordered the CID to produce a report by April 22nd. The public awaits with great anticipation what this “new” investigation will reveal.
What we have understood to date in this inquiry is that Aminul Haque, the Attorney General, appointed in 1991 by Chief Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed, the head of the Caretaker Government, played an immensely important role in gathering evidence and initiating the prosecution against General Ershad and the four military officers who were simultaneously charged with the former Army Chief in the Manzur Murder Case.
In September 1991, the Associated Press reported in an international dispatch from Dhaka that “three top officials prosecuting deposed President Hussain Muhammad Ershad in a corruption and gold smuggling case have received death threats.” The AP report stated that “Judges Mohammad Ali Khan and Fazle Rabbi, who headed a Special Tribunal, instituted to hear corruption cases against Ershad, received anonymous letters carrying death threats.” The AP referenced reports in the Dhaka based daily, Sangbad.
The report noted that “receiving a similar threat was Attorney General Aminul Haque, the government’s Chief Prosecutor”. The AP report concluded: “Haque said he was ‘not afraid of such threats’”. According to a source who was very familiar with the situation, the death threats delivered to Haque usually came in the form of anonymous phone calls.
However, the threats were very real. Following the AP report there were at least two specific attempts on his life. According to a source who personally spoke at length with Aminul Haque shortly after the event, a bomb was discovered that had been wired into his vehicle. On that day the Attorney General received a phone call from an intelligence source alerting him that his car had been set to explode. Haque called in additional security and the bomb was disarmed.
In February 28, 1995, Manzur’s brother filed the case alleging that his brother, General Manzur, had been murdered. In late June 27, 1995, the CID pressed charges against General HM Ershad, Major General Abul Latif, Lt. Colonel Shamsur Rahman Shams, Lt. Colonel Mostafa Kamal Bhuiyan, and Major Kazi Emdadul Haque
Two weeks later on July 13, 1995, Attorney General Aminul Haque died of a sudden heart attack after returning to his office from Court where he had just appeared as the Chief Prosecutor in one of the several cases filed against General Ershad. The family made no claims of foul play. However, it was a most convenient death from the perspective of those who had been charged with General Manzur’s murder.
When Aminul Haque died, the focus, the rigor and the determination he brought to prosecuting this case died with him. The case has wandered aimlessly ever since in the broken judicial system of Bangladesh’s lower courts with the names of key witnesses, over the years, mysteriously disappearing from the witness list and the setting of a possible world record by the number of judges who took serial responsibility for a case in which the main task seemed to be to “pass the ball” to the next judge in line.
For the Manzur family, whose father and husband was murdered in what appears to have been a pre-meditated and carefully planned killing, the judicial phenomenon of “passing the ball “ [i.e. ‘the case’] from one judge to another, has been an unconscionable and painful spectacle spanning two decades.
It is a case that should be carefully studied in Bangladesh’s law schools, not for its positive virtues, but for the systemic flaws it reflects. The final chapter of this “case study” is yet to be written.
(V) The Rashomon Phenomenon
There were three of us. Each in our own distinct way we were attempting to connect the dots. We wanted to understand what had happened in Chittagong in late May and early June of 1981. In the four-part series that ran in this newspaper in February, I described how I was able to link up the investigative work of three autonomous individuals.
By integrating the work of Major General Moinul Hussain Choudhury, and the former Deputy Commissioner of Chittagong, Ziauddin Choudhury with my own investigative research, a reasonably coherent account emerged of the events surrounding the death of Major General Abul Manzur. (See “The Murder of Major General Abul Manzur – Bir Uttam, February 22nd to 25th, 2014, Prothom Alo & The Daily Star)
Both General Moin and Ziauddin had published books that brought new information to light. Unfortunately, their important insights and the facts they presented were largely ignored.
General Moin had been present at Army Headquarters in Dhaka on May 30th, the day Ziaur Rahman was assassinated in Chittagong. At that time he was the Adjutant General of the Bangladesh Army. He spoke with General Manzur several times that day and was convinced that Manzur had no role whatsoever in Zia’s death.
In two days of discussion with me at his Dhaka flat and in his book (Silent Witness), General Moin described his conflict with General Ershad, the Army Chief, and General Mohabat Jan Choudhury, the Chief of the DGFI (Directorate General of Forces Intelligence). Moin was convinced that Manzur had been framed by these men and their associates as part of a carefully worked out plan. In his book Moin called it “an elaborate scheme”.
Ziauddin Choudhury in his own writings and in subsequent discussions with me expressed the view that the senior echelons of the Bangladesh Army under General Ershad’s leadership had created a completely false narrative surrounding Manzur’s death at the hands of “angry soldiers” following his removal from police custody at the Hathazari Police Thana on June 1, 1981.
Ziauddin was a senior civilian official in Chittagong at the time of these events and personally knew both General Zia who was killed on the morning of May 30th and General Manzur who was killed on the evening of June 1st. Ziauddin had excellent sources in the police and the military. In his book, he reconstructs the events of this period. The book is called “The Assassination of Ziaur Rahman & It’s Aftermath”.
As described in the February series, Ziauddin’s sources informed him that General Manzur was killed while in custody inside the Chittagong Cantonment. They also informed Ziauddin that Manzur was murdered by a senior military officer, who had arrived from Dhaka ostensibly to interrogate Manzur.
In his book Ziauddin described how the officer entered the room where Manzur was being held. Ziauddin wrote: “He [the senior officer from Dhaka] went in, fired his pistol at Manzur, and walked out—all according to some agreed plan.”
I had only met Ziauddin once in the 1970s at a mutual friend’s house in Dhaka. Since then he and I had never spoken until January 2014 when I contacted him to discuss his book. However, several years prior to my 2014 conversation with Ziauddin, I had met a source, living outside of Bangladesh, who claimed to me that he was essentially an eyewitness to General Manzur’s murder. His story was very similar to what Ziauddin had learned from military sources in Chittagong at the time of Manzur’s death.
On the night of June 1st my source was present inside the Chittagong Cantonment. He observed General Manzur being brought into the Cantonment and placed under detention in the VIP Guest House. My source personally knew General Manzur and immediately recognized him.
Not long afterwards this individual saw a high-ranking military officer, a Major General, arrive at the Cantonment. This man was normally stationed in Dhaka. My source immediately recognized this officer since he had personally encountered him on a number of occasions. My source also claimed to have seen this officer enter the VIP Guest House where Manzur was then being detained. The officer was in the Guest House for only a few minutes. He then promptly left the Guest House and immediately left the Cantonment.
My source claimed to me that he had then gone to the Guest House and entered the room where Manzur had been held. General Manzur had been shot in the head and killed with a single bullet. The General had been murdered. Others too had entered the room and observed the same scene.
This source provided me with the name of the senior officer who entered the Guest House that night. I explained in Part II of the four-part series that ran on February 23, 2014, why I was not publishing the name that had been disclosed to me. I indicated that I felt it was the duty of the prosecuting authority in Bangladesh to interview this eyewitness and directly secure his testimony in a setting that would protect this man’s identity and preserve his security.
I gave an example of a Syrian witness to torture and mass executions by the Assad regime and how the security of this individual’s identity had been carefully preserved while his testimony had been taken and scrutinized by highly qualified interlocutors. The witness had left Syria with several flash drives containing thousands of photographs that he and other colleagues had taken while serving in a special military documentation unit.
I suggested that the appropriate authorities in Bangladesh should attempt to structure a similarly secure environment outside of Bangladesh for my source to provide his testimony. If this witness was prepared to testify based on his assessment that his identity would not be disclosed and his security would be preserved, then clearly his testimony would be of some significance.
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(To be continued)
*Lawrence Lifschultz was South Asia Correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong). He has written for The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, The Nation (New York) and the BBC. He is the author and editor of several books including Hiroshima’s Shadow, Why Bosnia?, and Bangladesh: The Unfinished Revolution. Lifschultz can be reached by email at— [email protected]