Dhaka:
The Excessive Court docket right here on Sunday scrapped the decrease court docket’s verdict and acquitted all accused, together with former Bangladesh prime minister Khaleda Zia’s son Tarique Rahman and former state minister Lutfozzaman Babar, in a 2004 grenade assault in ousted premier Sheikh Hasina’s rally.
“The Excessive Court docket annulled the trial court docket verdict and acquitted all convicts together with Tarique Rahman,” a spokesman for the lawyer common’s workplace stated.
Tarique Rahman, 57, is the performing chairman of Bangladesh Nationalist Social gathering (BNP).
Two circumstances — one for homicide and one other underneath the Explosives Act — have been filed after a grenade assault on an Awami League rally at Bangabandhu Avenue in Dhaka left 24 individuals useless and almost 300 injured.
The HC bench of Justice AKM Asaduzzaman and Justice Syed Enayet Hossain acquitted all 49 accused and noticed that the trial court docket’s verdict within the circumstances was “unlawful.” The Excessive Court docket’s verdict comes after the bench heard the demise references and appeals associated to the circumstances filed over the assault.
The trial court docket had delivered the judgement based mostly on a confession by Mufti Abdul Hannan, the highest chief of the banned Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) outfit who was accused within the case.
Mufti Abdul Hannan has been executed in reference to one other case.
The Excessive Court docket stated the confessional assertion had no evidential worth because it was taken on drive and never examined correctly by the Justice of the Peace involved.
On November 21, the bench stored the demise references (trial court docket paperwork for affirmation of demise sentences) and the appeals filed by the convicted accused within the circumstances as curia advisari vult (which means the decision can be delivered any day) after it concluded a listening to on these issues.
Through the listening to on the demise references and appeals, the defence attorneys for the accused requested the Excessive Court docket to scrap the trial court docket verdict as there was no particular allegation in opposition to them.
In the meantime, showing for the State, Deputy Legal professional Generals Md Jashim Sarker and Md Russell Ahammad requested the Excessive Court docket bench to uphold the decrease court docket verdicts within the circumstances because the allegations in opposition to the convicted accused have been proved past cheap doubt.
Hasina, then opposition chief, narrowly escaped the assault on August 21, 2004, however 24 individuals have been killed as a number of grenades have been hurled when she was addressing a “rally in opposition to terrorism”.
A Dhaka court docket on October 10, 2018, sentenced 19 individuals, together with Babar, to demise within the two circumstances filed in reference to the assaults.
Nineteen others, together with Rahman, now in London, got life imprisonment and 11 have been handed completely different phrases in jail.
Analysts beforehand stated the incident modified Bangladesh’s politics ceaselessly. In distinction, the Enterprise Normal newspaper on the time stated that “it was a premeditated barbaric act designed to wipe out the entire management of Awami League, together with Hasina”.
The FBI was known as from the US to research the assault through which the assassins used grenades.
A former chief of Bangladesh’s spy company DGFI testified as a witness later within the trial court docket and stated the perpetrators have been protected underneath directives of the upper authorities.
The Excessive Court docket determination comes almost 4 months after Hasina’s Awami League regime was ousted in a student-led mass upsurge and he or she fled to India on August 5.
Three days later Professor Muhammad Yunus took oath because the chief adviser of the interim authorities.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
