Bangladesh: 2 Jamaat-e Islami leaders held for '71 killings

After they got no-arrest order from HC in 2 other cases, Cops pick up Kamaruzzaman, Quader Molla who are accused of killing 345 people during the 1971 Liberation War.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Staff | Int'l Desk
Source & Credit: Daily Star | July 14, 2010
By Daily Star Staff Correspondent

Jamaat-e-Islami leaders Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Abdul Quader Molla were arrested yesterday on charges of killing 345 people during the Liberation War in 1971.

Police made the arrests at the Supreme Court gate. They first picked up Molla at 4:15pm and then Kamaruzzaman at 6:15pm.

Assistant secretaries general of Jamaat, both were taken to the detective branch office.

Earlier in the day, the duo appeared before a High Court bench for anticipatory bail in two cases--one filed for a murder in 1971 and the other for a recent assault on policemen.


Around half an hour before Molla's arrest, the bench ordered the law enforcers not to arrest or harass him and Kamaruzzaman in those two cases.

Syed Nurul Islam, additional deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (Ramna), said the Jamaat leaders were not arrested in the cases to which the HC order applies.

Rather, he added, the two were detained in a case filed for a massacre in the capital's Mirpur area in 1971.

Detained Jamaat Ameer Motiur Rahman Nizami and Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid are their co-accused.

Pallabi police said freedom fighter Amir Hossain Mollah filed the case on January 24, 2008, with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court, which ordered police to record it as a regular case.

Amir Hossain in the case statement said Nizami, Mojahid, Kamaruzzaman, Quader Molla, three other fellow party men and three non-Bangalees killed 345 people including 21 of his relatives in Mirpur during the Liberation War.

Of those massacred, 65 were residents of Mirpur and the rest hailed from different districts.

While leaving the chamber of his counsel barrister Abdur Razzaq at around 6:00pm, Kamaruzzaman told reporters that the government is acting like a fascist regime. It is persecuting Jamaat leaders, violating court orders.

Pro-Jamaat lawyers and party activists were accompanying him on the court premises.

Tajul Islam, a lawyer for the detained Jamaat leaders, yesterday told The Daily Star that he would move a contempt petition today against the police for breaching the HC orders not to arrest his clients.

Of the two cases in which the Jamaat due sought anticipatory bail yesterday, one was filed on June 29 by Shahbagh police on charges of obstructing their work.

The other was filed with Keraniganj Police Station on December 17, 2007, by one Mozaffar Ahmed for killing his grandfather Golam Mostafa in 1971.

On June 29, police arrested Nizami, Mojahid and Nayeb-e-Ameer Delwar Hossain Sayedee in a case filed for hurting the sentiment of the Muslims. They were later remanded and shown arrested in other cases.





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