By DPA,
Dhaka : Bangladesh’s Awami League-led alliance government will bring back home from abroad the fugitive killers of the country’s founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to face a court verdict, a junior minister said Wednesday.
“To bring the killers back home, the government will also sign extradition deals with countries which do not have such agreements with Bangladesh,” State Minister for Home Affairs Tanjim Ahmed Sohel Taj told reporters.
A Bangladeshi court in late 1998 sentenced 15 former army officers to death in the Mujibur Rahman murder case. The high court upheld the verdict against 12, including the four now in the Dhaka Central Jail.
The state minister also said that the verdict of the case would be implemented after bringing the killers back. “Wherever they are, we will find them out to face the punishment as determined by the court,” Tanjim said.
The architect of Bangladesh’s independence, Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup Aug 15, 1975.
The killings were indemnified by a military government installed afterwards and the killers were allowed government jobs until one of Rahman’s two surviving daughters, Sheikh Hasina, assumed office in 1996.
Hasina, the current prime minister of the country, repealed the indemnity and initiated a trial for the killings during her 1996-2001 tenure.
According to official sources, among the convicts Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Abdul Aziz Pasha died in Zimbabwe in 2002 while other army officials are still on the run in different parts of the world.