Source/Credit: The New Age | Bangladesh
By David Bergman | October 30, 2011
A senior Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leader, Mir Quasem Ali, along with his US-based brother Mir Masum Ali, in the past year spent $310,000 (Tk 24 million) hiring one of the top United States lobbying firms to try and influence the country’s politicians and government officials on the ‘Bangladeshi War Crimes Tribunal’ and issues relating to the ‘political opposition,’ according to documents lodged with the US congress.
In March 2010, the Awami League government set up the International Crimes Tribunal to prosecute people alleged to have committed war crimes during the 1971 war of independence.
Since its establishment, the tribunal has detained seven men, five of whom are leaders of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami.
Quasem Ali, a successful businessman, is a member of both Jamaat’s 15-member central executive committee and its working committee.
The head of the ICT’s investigation agency has previously confirmed to journalists that the agency is conducting inquiries into whether Quasem Ali committed crimes during the 1971 war of independence. It is understood that in 1971 he was president of the Jamaat’s Chittagong unit student wing.
His younger brother Masum Ali, who lives in New York and is understood to be a US citizen, is named as the project director of media and publications on the website of the Muslim Ummah of North America, an organisation which attracts US-based supporters of the Bangladesh Jamaat.
Cassidy and Associates, which in 2010 was ranked as the sixth largest lobbying firm in the United States, is required by the Lobbying Disclosure Act 1995 to file with the US senate a registration form when any client starts using its services.
For as long as the arrangement continues, the firm must also file quarterly reports setting out the fees it receives from the client and the individual lobbyists within the company who undertook the work.
It is these publicly available documents which New Age has obtained in relation to the two brothers.
Abdur Razzaq, a Jamaat leader and head of the legal team defending his party colleagues accused of war crimes, declined to comment on whether the lobbying was undertaken on behalf of the political party. The forms do not mention Jamaat’s name.
Both Mir Quasem Ali and Cassidy and Associates failed to respond to a series of questions e-mailed to them.
It is not unlawful for a Bangladesh citizen or an organisation to hire a lobbying firm; documents filed with the US congress by lobbyists show that in 2001 and 2002, the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority spent $430,000 (Tk 32.6 million) on hiring US lobbyists and between 2001 and 2009, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters’ Association spent over $530,000 (Tk 40.2 million) on lobbyists.
The United States has become an important battleground for those supporting and those opposing the International Crimes Tribunal.
Whilst the Bangladesh government is seeking to get the US government’s stamp of approval for the tribunal, the Jamaat-e-Islami wants the US congress and government to take a critical position in light of what they argue are violations of due process.
The effectiveness of Cassidy and Associate’s lobbying may in part be gauged if Stephen Rapp, the US ambassador for war crimes-at-large, comes for his third visit to Bangladesh, expected to take place in November. He has previously said that the US government might provide assistance to the tribunal depending on how he and the congress viewed the fairness of the trial process.
The documents, obtained by New Age directly from the US senate database, show that on November 24, 2010, Cassidy and Associates filed a lobbying registration form for a ‘client’ named as ‘Mir Quasem Ali’ and an address which matches the Jamaat’s leader current address at Mirpur in Dhaka.
The registration form describes the client’s business as ‘Television programme production and broadcast.’ Quasem Ali is a major shareholder of the Diganta Media Corporation which owns Diganta Television and the newspaper Naya Diganta.
The document describes the ‘specific lobbying issue’ for which the client has sought services from Cassidy and Associates as ‘Bangladeshi war crimes tribunal and political opposition matters.’
Nearly two months later, on January 13, 2011, the company filed a ‘lobbying report’ which stated that Quasem Ali would be required to pay ‘$80,000’ (Tk 6 million) for work done by the company in the final three months of 2010.
The figures are supposed to be a ‘good faith estimate’ by the company ‘rounded to the nearest $10,000.’
The forms disclose that the lobbying company put together a four-member lobbying team to lobby the ‘US house of representatives, the US senate and the state department.’
The team included the company’s founder and executive chairman, Gerald SJ Cassidy, one of its senior vice-presidents Mark Clack, who had previously worked as a staff member of the house of representative international relations committee, and also Elizabeth Tregaskis, the company’s ‘international specialist.’
Gerald Cassidy is one of the most prominent and respected lobbyists in Washington.
In a subsequent ‘lobbying report’ relating to work undertaken in the first three months of 2011, the lobbying company estimates that it would receive a further fee from Quasem Ali of $100,000 (Tk 7.9 million)
The form, this time stated that the company’s lobby was solely focused on the ‘Bangladeshi war crimes tribunal’ and not on opposition party matters.
This fee paid by Quasem Ali in the first quarter of 2011 was amongst the largest quarterly fees incurred by any of Cassidy’s clients in 2011 — with only about one dozen out of 140 clients paying more.
The filed documents, publicly available through an online US congress database, shows that Quasem Ali did not pay for any further lobbying work but that less than a month after he terminated his contract with the company, his brother, Masum Ali then became a client of Cassidy’s seeking lobbying around exactly the same subject areas.
In the next six months, the lobbying disclosure forms, seen by New Age, show that the fees paid by Masum Ali totalled $130,000 (Tk 9.9 million) — divided into $50,000 for the work undertaken between April and June 2011 and $80,000 for lobbying between July and September.
Masum Ali is described, like his brother, as involved in television production which may refer to his role in establishing Diganta Television in the United States. The forms show that a similar team of lobbyists worked for Masum Ali, though Gerald SJ Cassidy was replaced with the company’s number two executive, Gregg Hartly.
It appears that the arrangement between Masum Ali and the lobbying company is ongoing as it has not yet filed a ‘termination’ form.
According to the US congress database, the two men appear to be the only individual clients of Cassidy and Associates in 2011. All their other clients were companies or organisations.
Other Bangladesh newspapers have suggested that Quasem Ali has paid $25 million to lobbyists but this figure is not supported by the documents disclosed to the US senate by Cassidy and Associates.
Criticisms of the tribunal have not just been made by the Jamaat-e-Islami. Independent human rights organisations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have raised concerns about inadequacies in the International Crimes (Tribunal) Act 1973 and the tribunal’s rules of procedure, and they may themselves be involved in lobbying the US government on the tribunal.
The US Ambassador for War Crimes, in a letter to government ministers earlier this year, also set out a series of changes that should be made to the law but many of these have not yet been made.
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