Abu Taher's trial was fixed, journalist claims

Dhaka: US journalist Lawrence Lifschultz who had extensively covered Bangladesh's coups in 1970s has told the High Court here that the fate of executed 1971 Liberation War veteran colonel Abu Taher was fixed ahead of his trial in a military court in 1976.

"I believe independent of the fact that the verdict was pre-determined before the [military] Tribunal convened," said the Pulitzer Prize winner US journalist in an written statement at the High Court.

Lifschultz, who was the Bangladesh correspondent and subsequently the New Delhi-based South Asia correspondent of Far Eastern Economic Review in 1970s, attributed the decision of Taher's hanging to the then strongman of Bangladesh General Ziaur Rahman, who eventually became the country's president.

Series of coups

Bangladesh witnessed a series of coups and counter coups since the August 15, 1975 assassination of the country's founder Bangabandhu Shaikh Mujibur Rahman along with most of his family members and after one such coup Taher sided with Ziaur Rahman with his soldiers in army and rescued him from the captivity.

But Rahman, the founder of now main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), now being led by his wife ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia, is thought to have believed that left-leaning Taher would eventually appear as an obstacle for his political ambition.

The US journalist's comments came as a hearing was underway on a writ filed by Taher's family and political colleagues challenging the military law and regulations under which the military tribunal had been formed.

"There are ample grounds to overturn Taher's so-called conviction and to vacate the verdict. Taher's execution ought to be called not only a miscarriage of just but ‘a crime committed by the state'," read the affidavit statement placed before the court through Bangladesh's foreign ministry.

Taher, a Liberation War sector commander who subsequently appeared as a left leaning leader on retirement from army, was the first Bangladeshi to walk to gallows in independent Bangladesh.