The Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) helped Maulana Tajuddin, one of the grenade suppliers of the August 21 grenade attack on an Awami League rally in 2004, to flee to Pakistan with a fake passport.
The DGFI made the fake passport, changing Tajuddin’s name to Badal. The DGFI men ensured his safe passage at the airport till he boarded a Bangladesh Biman flight.
Before that, as part of the plan, Lt Col Saiful Islam Joarder of the DGFI gave Major Monir an air ticket and a boarding card for Karachi.
Following an order from the “high-ups,” he assigned Major Monir and Lt Commander Mizan to ensure safe passage for Tajuddin. With the help of the DGFI field-level men, they completed their mission.
Former DGFI official Major Syed Monirul Islam, divulged this information yesterday, before a tribunal which has been conducting a trial of the August 21 grenade attack case.
The grenade attack in 2004 left 24 leaders and workers of the Awami League dead, including late president Zillur Rahman’s wife Ivy Rahman.
As many as 300 others were injured in the attack. Awami League chief and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina luckily escaped death. The BNP-Jamaat alliance was in power at that time.
Chief of the banned Harkat-ul-Jihad (Huji) Mufti Abdul Hannan was arrested by RAB on August 2005 and during an interrogation in the Taskforce for Interrogation (TFI) cell he confessed to planning the attack on the Awami League rally.
He admitted that the grenades were supplied by Maulana Tajuddin, the younger brother of the then deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu.
Monir told the court that two years into the incident, in 2006, he joined Dhaka DGFI’s CTIB. His duty was to collect information for anti-militant operations.
Maulana Abdus Salam, another accused in the case, and Maulana Tajuddin were taken to the DGFI office in August 2006. There, Brig Gen Amin and Lt Col Saiful Islam interrogated them.
“I later came to know that the duo, during the interrogation, admitted that Harkat-ul-Jihad (Huji) men had launched the grenade attack,” Monir said.
After the interrogation the two DGFI officials talked to someone on the phone for a while. “They told me that “higher authorities” had ordered them to send Tajuddin abroad,” he said.
Two days into the interrogation of two militants, Lt Col Saiful handed Maj Monir a fake passport and the boarding card of a Bangladesh Biman flight bound for Karachi, which were meant for Tajuddin.
Saiful then assigned Monir and Lt Commander Mizan to help Tajuddin board the flight safely. The two officials, along with some field-level DGFI members, held send Tajuddin to Pakistan.
Judge Shahed Nuruddin of the Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 fixed May 26 and 27 to cross-examine Monir, on behalf of other accused.
Monir gave a deposition as the 84th witness of the case. The court started recording his deposition from 12 noon for two and a half hours.
The total number of witnesses for the case is 582 and the number of accused is 52.
Source: UNBConnect
