War crimes trial
Witness says his brother was killed by Kamaruzzaman
A prosecution witness on Wednesday testified that the detained assistant secretary general of Jamaat, Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, and his Al-Badr thugs caught his freedom-fighter brother and killed him on 23 August, 1971. Mosharraf Hossain Talukdar, who is the fifth prosecution witness against Kamaruzzaman, told the International Crimes Tribunal-2 that Kamaruzzaman was an organizer of the Al-Badr in greater Mymensingh, chief of Sherpur Al-Badr, leader of the Islami Chattra Sangha and controller of an Al-Badr torture camp during the War of Independence.
Kamaruzzaman was on the dock.
In his deposition, Mosharraf said that his brother Golam Mostafa Talukdar, a second-year student and also the literature affairs secretary of the Sherpur College unit of East Pakistan Students’ Union, went to India to get martial training after 26 March, 1971 and came back after one or one and a half month.
Mosharaf, then a class seven student of Sherpur GK High School, said his brother, in the shelter of one of his uncles, Tofayel Islam Talukdar, who was also a member of the local Peace Committee, took part in the Higher Secondary Certificate examination.
He said that towards the end of the examination, his brother was caught by Al-Badr thugs at the order of Kamaruzzaman from a grocery shop at College More at around noon on 23 August, 1971, when he went there to buy a battery for his radio to hear news of the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra.
Mosharraf said that they came to know that his brother was taken to the Al-Badr camp in the abandoned house of noted trader Surendra Mohon Saha, and his uncle Tofayel went to the camp and requested Kamaruzzaman to release Mostafa, who refused top do so.
Tofayel also met the local Peace Committee’s leader Samidul Haque, who also requested Kamaruzzaman to release Mostafa, but all the requests went in vain, said the witness.
On the same night Kamaruzzaman, along with some Al-Badr members, took Golam Mostafa and Md Abul Kasem to Sheri Bridge where Mostafa was stabbed in the leg and then shot to death, he said.
Mosharraf said that Abul Kasem managed to escape as he jumped into river from the bridge after being shot in a finger of his right hand.
‘I saw my brother’s body with marks of bullet injury in his chest on the following day,’ he told the tribunal and began weeping.
‘Abul Kasem met us after independence and described how Mostafa was killed,’ he said.
‘After independence, my father or my mother lodged a case against Kamaruzzaman and some others for killing my brother Mostafa,’ he told the tribunal.
After the deposition, defence counsel Mohammad Kafil Uddin Chowdhury began questioning him.
He said that he knew that Kamaruzzaman was in jail from 1972 to 1975.
The cross-examination remained incomplete because the tribunal adjourned the proceedings until Thursday.
The cross-examination of Abdul Momen, the first prosecution witness against former BNP lawmaker and minister Abdul Alim, by Alim’s defence counsel AEM Khalilur Rahman had ended earlier.
The 71-year-old witness, Momen, on August 6 had testified that Alim, the then president of the Convention Muslim League’s Joypurhat unit, had ordered his followers to kill Hindus and loot their properties during the War of Independence in 1971.
He also had said that Alim formed the Shanti Committee in Jaypurhat, led it, incited atrocities and helped the Pakistani occupation army to kill, loot and set houses on fire.
Answering the defence counsel, he said that Alim contested the national assembly elections in 1970 from Joypurhat sadar.
Alim, the lone accused in war crimes cases enjoying bail, was present in the courtroom.
Courtesy of New Age
