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Feb 7th 2014, 14:19 by The Economist
A WEEK in politics may be a long time. Where justice is at stake however, in Bangladesh, a decade is relatively quick. For the past several years an inaptly named International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has been hearing the cases of Bangladeshis charged with committing crimes during Bangladesh's war of secession from Pakistan, in 1971. A striking number of the defendants are among the most senior members of parties in the political opposition; many have been sentenced to death for what they are accusing of having done more than 42 years ago. It was an entirely different case that shook the country this week, as another court wrapped up a much fresher case, dating from 2004. Again the accused included the political enemies of the sitting government and again many of them were sentenced to die.
There were no war crimes committed in 2004. Instead this case was about a bungled shopping trip. The bill of goods was short, but the Chinese arms on it would have been enough to set India’s combustible north-east on fire. Police intercepted about $5m-worth of weapons in Bangladesh’s main port city of Chittagong, in April 2004. At the time it was thought to be a record-breaking illegal shipment of weapons between non-state dealers. Most of the seized goods were made by Norinco, China’s largest state-owned arms manufacturer.
The consignment was ideally suited to guerilla warfare: it included more than 1,000 assault rifles, submachine guns with silencers, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, over 25,000 hand grenades, and 1.8m rounds of rifle ammunition. The intended recipient was the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), a militant group that has been fighting for decades in the name of cutting out an independent homeland from India’s state of Assam. A year before the interception their fight had suffered a major setback, with a loss of several safe havens in Bhutan.
The court found that the botched shipment was part of a multinational effort to reverse the ULFA’s fortunes. The agents involved were senior Bangladeshi politicians and intelligence officers serving under Khaleda Zia, then the prime minister, and they were chaperoned by Pakistani spies. Many things have changed in the region during the decade since their smuggling operation was busted up. But Mrs Zia is still standing as the leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which now plays a leading role in the beleaguered opposition.
For years the legal case in Bangladesh had gone nowhere. The country’s criminal justice system, slow and the handmaiden of the executive of the day, stood still. The BNP showed no interest in prosecutions. Only after the Awami League, the current government, took office in 2009 did prosecutors begin to consider the crime seriously. Investigators set out to expose the full cast of characters who had been plotting against India.
On January 30th, a trial court sentenced 14 men to death, most of them affiliated with opposition parties. All were convicted on smuggling charges related to the big arms haul of 2004. The ruling, if upheld by higher courts, effectively tears down the whole BNP structure that ruled Bangladesh between 2001 and 2006, including, by association, Mrs Zia’s son and heir apparent Tarique Rahman. It also complicates a recent slogan for the dynasty at the heart of the BNP: “Ziaur Rahman is our past. Khaleda Zia is our present. Tarique Rahman is our future.”
The court sentenced to death Lutfozzaman Babar, a long-time flunky of Mr Rahman’s. American diplomats have characterised Mr Babar, then the home minister, as “a known smuggler, an ally of Tariq, and reportedly pro-JI/pro-Islamist”. Other members of Mrs Zia’s inner circle, besides those already charged, have also been linked to the shipment. For instance, an adviser to Mrs Zia, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, whose involvement has been widely speculated, was not on the charge-sheet. Mr Chowdhury, a six-time MP from Chittagong who hails from a prominent political family in Pakistan, is the most senior BNP leader to have been indicted by the ICT for crimes against humanity. This week the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, vowed that her government would work to prove that in the light of Mr Rahman’s influence at the time, he must have known all about the weapons. Much has been made in Bangladesh of the testimony given by a former director of Bangladesh’s principal spy agency, the powerful Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI). He said for the record that in 2004, when he informed Mrs Zia, then the prime minister, that ten lorries full of arms had landed up in Chittagong, she showed no response.
Other notables sentenced to die include a former chief of military intelligence, the former second-in-command of the DGFI and a former head of the Criminal Investigation Department. One of India’s most wanted men, Paresh Barua, the leader of ULFA, was also handed the death penalty, in absentia. The prosecutor says that Mr Barua “had a deal with the Bangladeshi intelligence officers” to deliver arms to India’s north-east. One of the defendants told investigators that the Pakistani embassy in Dhaka was in on it. His testimony adds detail to an assessment in Jane’s Intelligence Review from 2004: that “the purchases were financed by a foreign intelligence service seeking to destabilise India’s north-east”.
The court also found guilty Motiur Rahman Nizami (pictured above), who leads Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party and a close ally of the BNP. Mr Nizami was already locked up, waiting to be sentenced by Bangladesh’s war-crimes court for crimes committed during Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan in 1971. He is accused of setting up Al Badr, a paramilitary force which helped the Pakistani army identify and kill pro-independence activists. He now faces the prospect of being sentenced to death twice over.
The Jamaat promised protests against the smuggling verdict, but the response was weak. The party’s ability to conduct violent campaigns has been much reduced. Many of its activists have been arrested, others shot dead. The BNP is utterly broken, too, having ceased to function as an opposition party. Its local leaders have wearied of their disruptive street politics against Sheikh Hasina, whether over court cases or elections. Western observers, who had been calling for another general election only a few weeks ago, appear to be coming to terms with five more years of Sheikh Hasina. The official developments agencies of America and Britain funded a poll that suggests the Awami League would anyway have won the election even if the opposition hadn’t boycotted, by a 6% margin. Equipped with a hypothetical mandate then, and with its opponents on the floor, Sheikh Hasina’s new government looks stronger than anyone had anticipated.
This should all make the men who run India’s foreign policy especially happy. India is close to Sheikh Hasina and the avowedly secular Awami League, and it endorsed the January election. Policymakers in Delhi tend to see Bangladesh in three ways. They are anxious to prevent Bangladesh resuming its role as a haven for the insurgent groups that operate in India. They also want Bangladesh to resist the sort of Islamist extremism prevalent in Pakistan. And they want their neighbour’s co-operation in limiting the flow of Bangladeshi migrants who cross its border seeking work.
Before the elections in January, when it still looked as if the BNP might contest, American officials were unsure which of the two dynasties would form the next government. So they visited Mr Rahman in London to let him know that an accession to his mother’s throne would require a change of behaviour on his part; in particular, that he would have to cut ties with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. At the same time Mrs Zia was trying to assure America, and India, that she would be looking after their security concerns. In a speech tailored for her foreign audience Mrs Zia vowed that, if she were elected again, she would lead the international fight against cross-border militancy. In the event, India, with its wary eye on both Pakistan and China, will not need to trust her.
Crime and politics in Bangladesh: Delayed detonations | The Economist
A WEEK in politics may be a long time. Where justice is at stake however, in Bangladesh, a decade is relatively quick. For the past several years an inaptly named International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has been hearing the cases of Bangladeshis charged with committing crimes during Bangladesh's war of secession from Pakistan, in 1971. A striking number of the defendants are among the most senior members of parties in the political opposition; many have been sentenced to death for what they are accusing of having done more than 42 years ago. It was an entirely different case that shook the country this week, as another court wrapped up a much fresher case, dating from 2004. Again the accused included the political enemies of the sitting government and again many of them were sentenced to die.
There were no war crimes committed in 2004. Instead this case was about a bungled shopping trip. The bill of goods was short, but the Chinese arms on it would have been enough to set India’s combustible north-east on fire. Police intercepted about $5m-worth of weapons in Bangladesh’s main port city of Chittagong, in April 2004. At the time it was thought to be a record-breaking illegal shipment of weapons between non-state dealers. Most of the seized goods were made by Norinco, China’s largest state-owned arms manufacturer.
The consignment was ideally suited to guerilla warfare: it included more than 1,000 assault rifles, submachine guns with silencers, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, over 25,000 hand grenades, and 1.8m rounds of rifle ammunition. The intended recipient was the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), a militant group that has been fighting for decades in the name of cutting out an independent homeland from India’s state of Assam. A year before the interception their fight had suffered a major setback, with a loss of several safe havens in Bhutan.
The court found that the botched shipment was part of a multinational effort to reverse the ULFA’s fortunes. The agents involved were senior Bangladeshi politicians and intelligence officers serving under Khaleda Zia, then the prime minister, and they were chaperoned by Pakistani spies. Many things have changed in the region during the decade since their smuggling operation was busted up. But Mrs Zia is still standing as the leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which now plays a leading role in the beleaguered opposition.
For years the legal case in Bangladesh had gone nowhere. The country’s criminal justice system, slow and the handmaiden of the executive of the day, stood still. The BNP showed no interest in prosecutions. Only after the Awami League, the current government, took office in 2009 did prosecutors begin to consider the crime seriously. Investigators set out to expose the full cast of characters who had been plotting against India.
On January 30th, a trial court sentenced 14 men to death, most of them affiliated with opposition parties. All were convicted on smuggling charges related to the big arms haul of 2004. The ruling, if upheld by higher courts, effectively tears down the whole BNP structure that ruled Bangladesh between 2001 and 2006, including, by association, Mrs Zia’s son and heir apparent Tarique Rahman. It also complicates a recent slogan for the dynasty at the heart of the BNP: “Ziaur Rahman is our past. Khaleda Zia is our present. Tarique Rahman is our future.”
The court sentenced to death Lutfozzaman Babar, a long-time flunky of Mr Rahman’s. American diplomats have characterised Mr Babar, then the home minister, as “a known smuggler, an ally of Tariq, and reportedly pro-JI/pro-Islamist”. Other members of Mrs Zia’s inner circle, besides those already charged, have also been linked to the shipment. For instance, an adviser to Mrs Zia, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, whose involvement has been widely speculated, was not on the charge-sheet. Mr Chowdhury, a six-time MP from Chittagong who hails from a prominent political family in Pakistan, is the most senior BNP leader to have been indicted by the ICT for crimes against humanity. This week the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, vowed that her government would work to prove that in the light of Mr Rahman’s influence at the time, he must have known all about the weapons. Much has been made in Bangladesh of the testimony given by a former director of Bangladesh’s principal spy agency, the powerful Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI). He said for the record that in 2004, when he informed Mrs Zia, then the prime minister, that ten lorries full of arms had landed up in Chittagong, she showed no response.
Other notables sentenced to die include a former chief of military intelligence, the former second-in-command of the DGFI and a former head of the Criminal Investigation Department. One of India’s most wanted men, Paresh Barua, the leader of ULFA, was also handed the death penalty, in absentia. The prosecutor says that Mr Barua “had a deal with the Bangladeshi intelligence officers” to deliver arms to India’s north-east. One of the defendants told investigators that the Pakistani embassy in Dhaka was in on it. His testimony adds detail to an assessment in Jane’s Intelligence Review from 2004: that “the purchases were financed by a foreign intelligence service seeking to destabilise India’s north-east”.
The court also found guilty Motiur Rahman Nizami (pictured above), who leads Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party and a close ally of the BNP. Mr Nizami was already locked up, waiting to be sentenced by Bangladesh’s war-crimes court for crimes committed during Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan in 1971. He is accused of setting up Al Badr, a paramilitary force which helped the Pakistani army identify and kill pro-independence activists. He now faces the prospect of being sentenced to death twice over.
The Jamaat promised protests against the smuggling verdict, but the response was weak. The party’s ability to conduct violent campaigns has been much reduced. Many of its activists have been arrested, others shot dead. The BNP is utterly broken, too, having ceased to function as an opposition party. Its local leaders have wearied of their disruptive street politics against Sheikh Hasina, whether over court cases or elections. Western observers, who had been calling for another general election only a few weeks ago, appear to be coming to terms with five more years of Sheikh Hasina. The official developments agencies of America and Britain funded a poll that suggests the Awami League would anyway have won the election even if the opposition hadn’t boycotted, by a 6% margin. Equipped with a hypothetical mandate then, and with its opponents on the floor, Sheikh Hasina’s new government looks stronger than anyone had anticipated.
This should all make the men who run India’s foreign policy especially happy. India is close to Sheikh Hasina and the avowedly secular Awami League, and it endorsed the January election. Policymakers in Delhi tend to see Bangladesh in three ways. They are anxious to prevent Bangladesh resuming its role as a haven for the insurgent groups that operate in India. They also want Bangladesh to resist the sort of Islamist extremism prevalent in Pakistan. And they want their neighbour’s co-operation in limiting the flow of Bangladeshi migrants who cross its border seeking work.
Before the elections in January, when it still looked as if the BNP might contest, American officials were unsure which of the two dynasties would form the next government. So they visited Mr Rahman in London to let him know that an accession to his mother’s throne would require a change of behaviour on his part; in particular, that he would have to cut ties with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. At the same time Mrs Zia was trying to assure America, and India, that she would be looking after their security concerns. In a speech tailored for her foreign audience Mrs Zia vowed that, if she were elected again, she would lead the international fight against cross-border militancy. In the event, India, with its wary eye on both Pakistan and China, will not need to trust her.
Crime and politics in Bangladesh: Delayed detonations | The Economist
