“I’ve heard the name of Nizami after the independence,” PW-3 Rustam Ali Mollah, a retired security guard at Mohammadpur Physical Training College, said on the closing day of his cross-examination by the defence counsel.
According to the PW, Mohammadpur Physical Training College was used by the occupation Pakistan army as a torture centre and makeshift training camp of Razakar, an auxiliary force of the junta, during the 1971 Liberation War.
Testifying against the Jamaat chief, PW Rustam, who was 16 in 1971, had said he saw Nizami along with accused Ghulam Azam and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, visiting the college. Subsequently, he came to know that the three leaders used to visit the camp and talked to the members of Al Badr and Razakar. At that time, Rustam used to live with his father, a security guard of the college, at its staff quarters.
Replying to defence suggestions, Rustam told the tribunal, “It’s not true Nizami didn’t visit the makeshift Razakar training camp set up at Mohammadpur Physical Training College and he didn’t visit the camp frequently.”
Rustam outright denied the defence question that he is always hooked on drugs.
He also denied the defence suggestion that he made false evidence against Nizami in connivance with PW Zahir Uddin Jalal alias Bichchu Jalal, a Liberation War hero.
With detained accused Nizami in the dock, senior defence counsel Mizanul Islam conducted the cross-examinations.