Dhaka desk: Bangladesh will go ahead with fresh cases at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), to put on trial the 195 Pakistani soldiers who were handed over to the Pakistani authorities as per the 1974 Delhi Agreement.
The law, justice and parliamentary affairs minister, barrister Anisul Haq, said this yesterday (Wednesday) during a programme. He also said that this would be don,e though there is no legal or moral obligation for Bangladesh to move forward with the cases at the ICJ.
“By now, several of the 195 Pakistani army and air force officers have passed away. Hence, only the living ones will face the trial. I, as the minister for law, will build and move forward with the cases at the ICJ,” said Anisul Haq.
He was delivering his speech at the concluding session of the seminar on “Commemorating March 25, Genocide Day”.
The seminar was organised by the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) at its headquarters in the capital.
Foreign minister AHM Mahmud Ali was the chief guest at the inaugural session of the seminar.
The law minister said Bangladesh has collected specific evidence of genocide against those 195 Pakistani officers and they can still be tried at the ICJ.
Under the tripartite agreement signed in Delhi, the 195 war criminals were repatriated to Pakistan in 1974. But as the tripartite agreement has not been ratified by the Bangladesh Parliament, it carries no legal basis, said the law minister.
The minister also said that Bangladesh at that time decided not to proceed with the trials as an act of clemency.
However, this “clemency” has no bearing on the trial of those who committed genocide, he added.
It is to be noted that the UN high commissioner for Human Rights report of 2009, titled “International Law and United Nations Policy on Amnesty”, said: “Under various sources of international law and UN international policy, amnesties are impermissible if they prevent prosecution of individuals who may be criminally responsible for war crimes and genocide.
An amnesty for genocide would violate the Genocide Convention and the customary international law.
The law minister said there is no denying that “Operation Searchlight” launched by the Pakistan military on 25 March, 1971, targeting innocent civilians in selected areas of the city clearly had genocidal intent. “The famous ‘Blood Telegram' sent by the then US Consul to the state department used the word ‘selective genocide’. The same term was used by Anthony Mascarenhas in the heading of his report published in the Sunday Times,” he added.
He said such literary discourse, along with the legal basis provided by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), surely puts Bangladesh in a stronger footing today.
“The ICT has provided a strong legal perspective to the crime of genocide committed in Bangladesh. It is interesting to note that the ‘critics’ of ICT BD, whom I would rather call ‘detractors’, have never denied the fact that Bangladesh indeed experienced ‘genocide’ during the 1971 Liberation War. Their criticism was confined to the trial process,” he added.
