Bangabandhu’s Assassination: Global conspiracies linked to it should be probed

Giving indemnity to the killers of Father of the Nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was absolutely wrong, they told the event organised by the Center for Research and Information.

The webinar titled "Bangladesh 1975: Setting the clock" was arranged to mark the National Mourning Day and to pay tribute to Bangabandhu and his family members.

"The men behind that [Bangabandhu assassination] would not move without Ziaur Rahman's backing and Zia would not move without American backing. I think it needs to be further investigated," said Lawrence Lifschultz, an investigative journalist who wrote about Bangladesh when he was the South Asia correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Talking about 1975, the year Bangabandhu was assassinated, Lifschultz said, "Weeks before the coup, Zia was meeting with the senior member of the US embassy, and that we also know was with the CIA station chief in a private meeting in Dhaka. And we also know that there was tremendous tension within the American embassy over what happened with the American ambassador Davis Eugene Boster very disturbed and stressed as he has given instructions that all the embassy staff would have no contact with anyone planning and thinking about a coup. He articulated those six months before the events occurred."

He also said that Zia had met the CIA station chief at a Bangladeshi businessman's house in Dhaka at a dinner.

"But the critical factor on that morning [after the assassination], General Shafiullah wrote, Zia was the key fellow in the army as deputy chief of army staff who held back any other army from going back to Road-32."

After 1975, Bangladesh went under a real military dictatorship which was even more violent than Pakistani rulers. "In my view, psychologically, Ziaur Rahman was also something of a psychopath in his capability to use and betray others and use violence."

PEN International's Writers in Prison Committee Chair Salil Tripathi, who interviewed self-confessed killer Colonel Faruk in 1986, said Faruk was incredibly confident and he can remember the mercilessness in his voice.

Somebody commits a heinous crime and here it was rewarded, he said, referring to the indemnity ordinance.

"Any crimes against humanity need justice, need some sort of legal remedy. Anything indemnifying violence of this nature simply has no place ideally in any society."

He said that serious questions have to be asked about whether Bangladesh is staying in line with the values of 1971. "You know bloggers are being threatened, being killed, photographers and writers are being put in jail and there are uses of the digital securities act."

Bangladeshi journalist Syed Badrul Ahsan said the August 15 assassination of Bangabandhu inaugurated the illegal extra-constitutional seizure of power.

Economist Mohammed Farashuddin Ahmed who was private secretary to Bangabandhu until August 12, 1975, and former Dhaka University pro-vice chancellor Nasreen Ahmed, who was the next door neighbour of Bangabandhu on August 15, narrated the horror of the fateful day.

The discussion was moderated by Dhaka Tribune Editor Zafar Sobhan.