KARACHI: The federal government has been asked to take up the matter of so-called Bangladesh war crime trials with the United Nations and organise an international conference in London and Washington on miscarriage of justice to create awareness regarding the violation of various provisions of international human rights treaties.

These suggestions and recommendations were made at the first ever workshop on “Legal Aspects of Bangladesh War Crimes Trials”, organised by a leading legal think tank, the Research Society of International Law (RSIL), at a hotel on Friday.

In his key address, RSIL President Advocate Ahmer Bilal Soofi said the accused persons or their families could also take up the matter in the UN Human Rights Forum in Geneva. “Those denied opportunity as witness can also take up the matter at the UN forum,” he added.

The workshop was attended by a large number of academics, diplomats, law students, media personnel and eminent members of civil society, including former ambassador to the UN Hussain Haroon, retired Lt Gen Tariq Waseem Ghazi, Nawab of Junagarh Nawab Mohammad Jahangir Khanji.

Giving the details of legislation enacted in Bangladesh over a period of time for conducting war crime trials, Advocate Soofi said the laws included the Collaborators (Special Tribunals) Order 1972, International Crimes (Tribunal) Act, 1973 (as amended in 2009) and various provisions of the Bangladesh Constitution.

He referred to the Tripartite Agreement of 1974 and said it was an agreement of non-prosecution under which all prisoners of war were repatriated to Pakistan, including the 195 suspects. “Therefore, in the spirit of reconciliation embodied in the Tripartite Agreement, Bangladesh, as a state, gave up its right to try war crimes in 1971,” he said, adding that as a follow-up, Bangladesh also repealed the 1972 Collaborators Order.

However, the lawyer said, the International Crimes (Tribunal) Act was revived in 2009 under which the war crime tribunals were set up. “The said tribunals were granted a separate procedural charter in which there were glaring flaws, from a human rights perspective,” he said while reading out Sections 19 and 23 of the Act, in which the application of the Bangladesh criminal procedure code and evidence law was specifically excluded.

He said this was an unprecedented exclusion as never before in recent history was a court or tribunal empowered to grant life sentences or capital punishment dispensed with the criminal procedure law or the law of evidence.

Advocate Soofi said the Bangladesh law created space for introducing hearsay evidence, something unheard of in criminal trials across the world.

The targeting of one political party and the pro-prosecution bias in the trials was manifestly apparent so far in the proceedings, he said.

“The trial procedure and practice was in direct violation of Articles 9, 6 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a convention to which Bangladesh is also a State Party,” he added.

The RSIL chief also shared with the audience international criticism against the trials by organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Hussain Haroon told the participants that the affidavit submitted by the Haroon family was tossed aside by the Bangladesh government despite the fact that one of the accused had been residing in the Haroon family’s home at the time he allegedly committed the war crimes.

Retired Lt Gen Ghazi, former corps commander of Karachi, said time had come to get people on-board to act against these violations of international law being committed by Bangladesh.

“It is a matter of shame that we have abandoned those who fought for our solidarity,” he deplored.

Summing up the discussion and responding to the queries of the participants, Advocate Soofi stated that good relations amongst neighbours were important. He added that there were legal instruments which bound all neighbours to counter terrorism and abstain from interfering in each other’s internal matters.

He said the purpose of this workshop was to legally assess serious flaws in the process of prosecution and, “notwithstanding our effort to improve relations with Bangladesh, there is nothing wrong in bringing to the notice of the government of Bangladesh the legal concerns that are not only Pakistan’s but also shared by the international community and NGOs”.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2016