A parliamentary body is likely to implicate Fakhruddin Ahmed, former chief adviser to the military-controlled interim regime, and the then army chief, Moeen U Ahmed, in the clashes between the students and army personnel at Dhaka University in August 2007.
The parliamentary subcommittee that was formed to investigate the clashes decided on Tuesday to include them among the accused in its report, said committee sources.
The committee, however, decided to give Fakhruddin and Moeen the opportunity to defend themselves before the committee through teleconference before the report is placed in Parliament in the next session, said meeting sources.
Sources said that the subcommittee members had based their report on the statements of former advisers, university teachers and students, former army officials and student leaders who had accused Fakhruddin and Moeen of being implicated in the violence.
He said that the committee members, as per the statement of the witnesses, found the two of them responsible for the widespread violence and persecution of teachers and students.
‘We will start to prepare our report in two or three days and it will be placed before the Parliament in the next session,’ the chief of the subcommittee, Rashed Khan Memon, told reporters after the meeting.
They had earlier issued letters twice to Fakhruddin and Moeen, asking them to appear in person, but instead both of them had sent written statements to the subcommittee.
The subcommittee rejected their written statements and asked them to participate in a teleconference but they did not respond till Tuesday.
Fakhruddin and Moeen, both of whom are now in the USA, in their letters told the subcommittee that the decisions regarding the Dhaka University violence was not taken by them but by another authority.
They also claimed that they had nothing to do with the arrest of the teachers as it was a matter of the judiciary.
But on February 27 this year some DGFI officers, including former Chief of General Staff Sina Ibne Jamali, appeared before the subcommittee and claimed that the intelligence agencies had played no role in this regard as everything was done in line with the directives of the chief adviser and army chief.
But the education adviser to the then interim government, Ayub Quadri, in his statement to the committee accused a certain intelligence agency of fomenting the incident.
The parliamentary standing committee on the education ministry on 19 August, 2009 formed the four-member subcommittee, headed by its chairman Rashed Khan Menon, to investigate the clashes on August 2007 that were a prelude to countrywide turmoil, mostly in the universities.
Other members of the sub-committee are Mirza Azam, Shah Alam and Biren Shikdar.
Violence erupted on 20 August, 2007 when some soldiers beat up three students and insulted a teacher during a football match on the university gymnasium field.
Thousands of DU students on the same day took to the streets to protest against the incident and demand withdrawal of the army camp from the campus. They also asked for an apology from the concerned troops.
There were pitched battles between the students and police for the next two days which injured over 250 people, mostly students.
-With New Age input
