‘Some assets of fugitive Bangabandhu killers traced’

Shafique Ahmed

Law Minister Shafique Ahmed on Tuesd

ay said the government has traced some properties of the fugitive convicted killers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The properties will be confiscated after the government agencies become sure about those, he said while talking to reporters at his Bangladesh Secretariat office after a meeting of the taskforce on bringing the fugitive convicted killers of Bangabandhu back to the country.

The law minister, however, refused to disclose where and how much property of the convicted killers the government found.

The amount of the property and their places cannot be announced at this moment for the interest of investigation, he told The Daily Star.

Shafique Ahmed said an investigation is going on to find out more properties of the convicted killers.

The killing of Bangabandhu is a crime against the humanity, not a normal murder, and that is why the killers have been convicted and sentenced to death by courts, he said.

He said the government has requested the governments of the USA and Canada to return the killers back to Bangladesh.

Among the six convicted killers, two are now in the US and Canada, but the government has no specific information about the whereabouts of the four others.

The six fugitives are Khandaker Abdur Rashid, Shariful Haque Dalim, Nur Chowdhury, Rashed Chowdhury, Abdul Mazed and Moslehuddin Khan.

On November 21 last year, the government decided to confiscate their properties.

In 2009, the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty of 12 killers, including the six fugitives. Of the 12, Syed Farooq Rahman, Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Bazlul Huda, AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed, Mohiuddin Ahmed were executed on January, 27, 2010. Another convict, Aziz Pasha, died in Zimbabwe in 2001. The trial began in a Dhaka court in 1997.

A top official present at Tuesday’s meeting said the government is trying to trace their properties through sub-registrars offices, Bangladesh Bank, House Building Finance Corporation and Rajuk.

Foreign Minister Dipu Moni, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam and Inspector General of Police Hassan Mahmood Khandker were also present at the meeting.

Source: The Daily Star