The High Court here on Sunday set aside a lower court verdict and acquitted all the accused, including former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s son Tariq Rahman and former minister of state Lutfozaman Babar, in the 2004 grenade attack on a rally of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. .
A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office said, “The High Court annulled the trial court’s verdict and acquitted all the accused, including Tariq Rehman.”
Tariq Rahman, 57, is the acting president of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Two cases – one of murder and the other under the Explosives Act – were registered after a grenade attack on an Awami League rally in Dhaka’s Bangabandhu Avenue left 24 people dead and around 300 injured.
The HC bench of Justices AKM Asaduzzaman and Syed Inayat Hussain acquitted all 49 accused and said the trial court’s verdict in the cases was “illegal”. The High Court’s decision came after the bench heard death references and appeals related to the cases filed over the attack.
The trial court had given its verdict in the case on the basis of the confession of Mufti Abdul Hannan, the top leader of the banned Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) organization.
Mufti Abdul Hannan has been hanged in connection with another case.
The High Court said that the confessional statement had no evidentiary value as it was coerced and was not properly examined by the magistrate concerned.
On November 21, the bench took up the death references (trial court documents to confirm death sentence) and appeals filed by convicted accused in the cases as curiae advisory vult (meaning the verdict will be pronounced any day) after the hearing ended. Kept as. On those matters.
During the hearing on death references and appeals, defense lawyers for the accused requested the High Court to set aside the trial court’s decision as there was no specific allegation against them.
Meanwhile, appearing for the state, Deputy Attorneys General MD Jashim Sarkar and MD Russell Ahmed requested the High Court bench to uphold the trial court’s verdict in the cases as the charges against the guilty accused were proved beyond reasonable doubt. Had happened.
Hasina, the then opposition leader, survived the attack on August 21, 2004, but several hand grenades were hurled at her while she was addressing an “anti-terrorism rally”, killing 24 people.
On October 10, 2018, a Dhaka court sentenced 19 people, including Babar, to death in two cases filed in connection with the attacks.
Nineteen others, including Rahman, now in London, were given life imprisonment and 11 were given separate prison terms.
Analysts had earlier said that the incident had changed the politics of Bangladesh forever. In contrast, the Business Standard newspaper at the time said that “it was a premeditated barbaric act designed to eliminate the entire leadership of the Awami League, including Hasina”.
The FBI was called from America to investigate this attack in which the killers used a grenade.
A former head of Bangladesh’s spy agency DGFI later testified as a witness in the trial court and said that the criminals were protected under instructions from higher authorities.
The High Court’s decision comes nearly four months after Hasina’s Awami League government was ousted from power in a student-led mass uprising and she fled to India on August 5.
Three days later, Professor Muhammad Yunus was sworn in as the chief advisor to the interim government.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
