By IANS,
Dhaka : Chief of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party Thursday said that killing of unarmed civilians during the movement for liberation from Pakistan in 1971 was “genocide”, his interrogator said.
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) Ameer Motiur Rahman Nizami made the statement during day-long interrogation by members of the investigating agency at a ‘safe house’ in the national capital’s Dhanmondi area.
Nizami admitted that the murder of thousands of Bangladeshis during those nine months was “genocide and crime against humanity,” Star Online, website of The Daily Star reported.
What Nizami told the investigators is contrary to what he has been saying on record, opposing Bangladesh’s separation from Pakistan as a result of “an Indian conspiracy”.
“When we showed him a video clip of brutal killing during the Liberation War and inquired about it, he (Nizami) said it was genocide,” Sanaul Haque, one of the four-member investigating team, told reporters.
“I am now 70 and therefore I can hardly remember the incidents that took place 40 years back,” the investigator quoted Nizami as saying.
Nizami said he was trying to recall those incidents, he added.
“But we are not putting any pressure on him,” the official said.
The investigators inquired from Nizami about his role during the Liberation War, Sanaul added. But he did not disclose what Nizami said in reply.
Nizami was allowed to consult his lawyers who waited in the adjoining room. He had lunch with them, the investigators said.
Nizami and five others who hold top posts in the JeI have been arrested and are awaiting trial by the International War Crimes Tribunal, a three-member judicial body set up to probe what are called “war crimes”.
A former minister (2001-06), Nizami is among those who led Islamist militia, Al Badr, Al Shams and Razakars, who are accused of targeting civilians, among them religious minorities, perceived as sympathetic to the freedom movement.
Nizami and his associates have denied any involvement.
Acts of killing, rape, loot and arson were unleashed March 25, 1971. The militia aided the army and the authorities in the then East Pakistan government.
Bangladesh attained freedom and separated from Pakistan in December 1971.