Mohiuddin AKM Ahmed was one of a handful of junior officers, mostly majors and a few colonels, of the Bangladesh army who, on August 15 1975, killed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the president of Bangladesh, and nearly all of his family, including pregnant women and Sheikh Mujib’s 10-year old boy. For the next three months the majors and colonels barricaded themselves in the presidential palace with the man they appointed the new president of Bangladesh. They were forced into exile on November 3, 1975 and fled to Bangkok, Thailand.
One of the leaders of the gang of cold-blooded murderers was Liuetenant Colonel Farook Rahman. He was interviewed in exile on May 30, 1976 by the Sunday Times. In the interview Farook takes credit for the killings of August 15 the previous year. It is a fascinating look into the mind of a killer as he takes pride in the murders and offers his justifications for the killings.
The Sunday Times article that contains the interview is a much sought after document. This week I visited the Library of Congress and copied the article from the microfilm archives. Click here for a pdf of this historically important article as it appeared in the newspaper on May 30 1976.
I have transcribed below the entire article for the convenience of the reader. The title of the article is "I helped to kill Mujib, dare you to put me on trial?":
IN THIS remarkable article, the man who engineered the killing of the "father" of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in August last year, challenges the present regime to put him on trial for murder. The man, Lieutenant Colonel Farook Rahman, accuses the present regime, led by General Ziaur (Zia) Rahman of betraying a movement that considered reform so vital that it killed the state’s founding father in an effort to achieve it. The article inevitably gives only one view of the crisis but it is crucial to understanding events in that tortured country.
"Let the Bangladesh government put me on trial for the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. I say it was an act of national liberation. Let them publicly call it a crime.
I engineered the coup of August 15 last year to put the brakes on my country’s headlong descent into hell.
I ordered Mujib’s killing because I had personal knowledge that although he was head of state, he set free and protected his party henchmen of the Awami League, who, in the town of Tongi, near Dacca, raped and murdered a young bride and laughed in our faces when we tried to bring them to justice.
I ordered Mujib’s death because he also ruthlessly killed some of his political opponents. Let the present government deny it, if it can, that it has evidence of this.
In law such a man is considered to be accessory both before and after the fact of murder. But in Bangladesh there was no law except Mujib’s word. I wanted to re-establish the sequence of crime and punishment.
Sheikh Mujib had to die for four other reasons.
First, because of ill-conceived personal power he needlessly enslaved a nation which had willingly made him its father. Mujib’s politics of deceit put brother against brother when he should have united the people. He crushed the Press. He reduced the national assembly to a rubber stamp for his personal whims. He sent thousands of people to jail because he would not tolerate dissent.
Secondly, Mujib and his family, his Awami Leaguers and corrupt officials plundered the country while the rest of the people starved.
Thirdly, Mujib’s corrupt and worthless administration prostituted my country to foreign powers. By forever holding out a beggar’s bowl he made us an object of international contempt.
Last, but not the least, Mujib betrayed his faith, Islam, which is the religion of my people and the one thing which can give the ideological thrust to our forward march.
Thus Mujib, in the short space of 4 1/2 years, almost destroyed the Bangladesh for which his own admission 2 million people lost their lives in 1971 liberation struggle.
Since I had no ambition for personal power, I agreed last August to a suggestion by my colleague, and brother-in-law, Colonel Abdur Rashid, that Khandakar Mushtaque Ahmed, a senior politician, be made president to replace Mujib. He was given the task of national reconstruction. At the same time I personally insisted that Major General Zia be appointed chief of staff of the army. I thought he could unite and build up the force which had not only been humiliated by Sheikh Mujib but also had suffered terrible neglect at his hands.
In accepting the jobs we offered them, Mr Mushtaque and General Zia endorsed our reasons for the change. But they failed to follow through.
For his own reasons which were not known to us, Mr Mushtaque, during his presidency from August to November last year, kept putting off the economic, social and political reforms that were required. We gave General Zia timely warning of a counter-coup by officers immediately under him, but he did nothing to squash it. As a result Mushtaque and Zia were forced to resign on November 3 while we went into voluntary exile to prevent a civil war.
Four days later when our troops awakened to the power struggle among the officers, they revolted and reinstated General Zia as the army chief in the hope of restoring the direction we set on August 15. Since then, they have been victimised for their loyalty and patriotism while those responsible for the counter-coup on November 3 were rather curiously released from jail last month without benefit of court martial. We were forced to remain out of our country "at the pleasure of the government."
As we have been accused of inciting indiscipline in the armed forces, let me set the record straight.
Colonel Rashid and I left the country last November and remained out of touch, but since then there have been at least four major incidents of men refusing to obey their officers’ orders. The first was in Dacca, second in Chittagong on February 28. The third a few days later in Bramanbaria and the fourth in Dacca – all before Rashid and I returned last month on a brief visit to discuss our future.
I went to Borga (north of Dacca) on April 29 to meet my troops at General Zia’s request. Next day Col Rashid was arrested and sent out of Bangladesh. I returned to Dacca on May 9 against the wishes of my troops, who suspected a similar trick would be played on me. I had been assured by senior officers that General Zia only wanted to talk to me, and that I would be allowed to return. In the event these assurances were worthless, Zia did not talk to me, but had me expelled plain.
Some newspapers have suggested I was plotting a coup to remove Zia. I refute this utterly. I could have killed him in his office as I has a revolver in my pocket for self-defence, but I had no intention of killing him. I only wanted to give him another chance to redeem his word before the troops.
The tragedy for the people of Bangladesh is that, apart from the dissolution of the assembly and a reduction in the price of rice – due mainly to the people’s own action against smugglers – nothing has substantially changed. The repression continues, with the police replacing Mujib’s Awami League as the instruments of terror. The Press remains gagged.
The grab for personal power grows noticeably stronger each day as the promise of early elections fades. Islam is still denied its rightful place in the life of the nation. Mujib’s ghost lives in his successors, first Khandakar Mushtaque Ahmed, and now General Zia. Neither has basically altered the patterns he set.
The danger to my country lies in the fact that Zia and his commanders cannot or will not come to terms with the forces of change. The people want a change but they are silenced by martial law. So the common soldier who is well-grounded in the common earth of Bangladesh speaks for them. In the absence of democratic expression (it seems there will be no elections) the troops constitute the most representative assembly in the country today. They are at variance with the senior officers who are pulling the other way. The government calls this "mutiny." If there is to be no change, why did Mujib have to die? Let Zia get on with my trial. The people will give their verdict."
There was such bravado and righteousness from the leader of the killers. Farook claimed in the interview that he wanted to "re-establish the sequence of crime and punishment." Yet when Farook, Mohiuddin, and the others were finally brought to trial, all that bravado evaporated as they were subjected to the "sequence of crime and punishment". Farook, who was present at his trial, claimed he was not the killer, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Gone was the bravado of yesteryear when the law finally caught up with him and his cohorts. He, like Mohiuddin now, claimed innocence. They both claimed a foggy memory, blamed someone else, and claimed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had a hard time explaining away the inconvenient fact that he and his fellow majors ruled the country from August to November 1975 – and the fact that they could not stop bragging about their "heroism" in rescuing Bangladesh from "hell" by killing Mujib and his family. The murderers who showed so much bravado while they had all the guns now show themselves to be cowards.
Wow! That’s one heck of a find. Are you going to slip a copy in Rohrbacher’s mailbox? Malkin’s? I wonder what their response would be?
Wow! So this article DOES exist!\:d/
He doesn’t feel the same anymore…
In a written statement to court in 1996 he said: he was not involved in the killings of Aug 15 at all. He also said the voice in the audio of Mascarenhas’ interview (author of Legacy of Blood) is not really his voice – it was a creation of modern technology to implicate him.
This guy is in Bangladesh, awaiting appeal hearing, that has stalled for nine years. This article needs to be in the judge’s hand.
Hey Robbie, I felt like a kid in a candy store when I went to the Library of Congress this week. For those of you who do not live in DC, if you come to visit, take the time to go visit this national treasure. Its our tax dollars at work – and important work it is. The Library pretty much has anything that was ever published anywhere. If you are like me and you love studying history, you can get lost in the collections.
I dug up Bangladeshi newspaper articles from the time, from the microfilm archives as well. Its remarkable to see the reporting under government censorship at the time. Even though the reporting is obviously stilted (lots of rah-rah we love the military stuff), it offers a window into the atrocities at the time. For people like me who lived through it, its not enough to say, “trust us”. I would rather rely on the overwhelming documentary evidence to substantiate what all of us saw.
I will post all the documents as pdfs in one place chronologically for anyone who wants to use them for research into the time (hint: I’m talking about you, Dana). I’ll also try to transcribe them one at a time so that they will be searchable.
Robbie, I don’t know if you picked it up from the interview or not, but his reasoning is very similar to other Islamists, for example Osama bin Laden. He knows he is right, he is sure he is right, and because he is right, he can kill to fix the “problem”. And of course he will kill the person for “betraying” Islam. Here’s a telling passage from the interview:
These guys have a god complex. But, once they are facing justice, not so much.
Incidentally, there is always a personal sleight that precipitates these types of murders. The ideological justification follows soon after, kind of an add-on justification. In this case, some of these junior officers had been dismissed for various reasons. The genesis of the plan came from Major Dalim, a colleague of Mohiuddin and Farook. Dalim felt he was insulted by a relative of the president at a club. He felt he was not being given the respect he deserved so he slapped the other man in public. He was disciplined and subsequently dismissed from the army. So, he got together with his buddies in the army and hatched this plan to kill not just the president, but the rest of his family too to redeem his “honor” as a military man. Once they killed the president, they realized they could not control the country by themselves and was caught in a standoff/unholy alliance with the senior officers of the military. So they basically bunkered themselves in the presidentail palace and tried to save their asses. In November the senior officers had had enough and they were forced to flee the country. The General Zia Farook refers to in the interview is the man who became chief-of-staff of the army after the coup, and formed an alliance of sorts with these guys.
But the events these guys started spun out of control and coups, and counter-coups followed. Zia ended up on top eventually. He sent all these guys, the killers off on diplomatic assignments to keep them out of the country, and at the same time to protect them from reprisals. Then Zia set about to purge the military of others he didnt trust by trying them in military tribunals and hanging them in quick order. My friend’s father was the head of these military tribunals. Under this guy, whose name Bangladeshi know well, many well known Bangladeshi freedom fighters who were part of the military were sent to their deaths. It was a sad chapter in the history of Bangladesh – a chapter that would last 16 years until democracy was finally restored when the people were finally able to send the army back to the barracks. For his part in heading these military tribunals, my friend’s father was given a plum position as the Ambassador to Singapore by Zia. Thats the MO of the military in Bangladesh, do their bidding and they send you off as a diplomat.
All of the above started when a few junior officers like Mohiuddin, in their 20s and early 30s, thought they were smarter than the rest and knew what was good for a country. These guys are not only murderers, but megalomaniacs. Talk about a God complex.
Zafa, glad to be of service. :”>
I think this article was introduced in court. This article also needs to be circulated far and wide. The only way to combat spin is with facts – and with a wide distribution of the facts.
The issue is not the killers as you say but what they had hoped to acheive by the killing. Awami League and Mr Sheikh raped bangladesh and Bangladesh is still suffering from that! No matter the \
Farook Rahman was about 29 when the coup took place and hadn’t turned 30 yet at the time of the interview. If you had read “Legacy of blood”, you would’ve noted the reference he makes about incidents in Tongi- THAT was the real instigator and not the incident with Dalim as you say. I think it is fair to say he was idealistic and the bravado was part and parcel of that. In any case, one needs not to look at any of these situations as black and white or unilaterally, as generally socio-political scenarios- (especially in the case of Bangladesh after liberation -it was a tumultuous time) is far more complex. We really do need to keep that in mind rather than heading into reductive rubrics to explain away the whole situation.
Also, referring to Mash’s ‘observation’,
– I have to say you are really eating up the media sound bites re: islamism and terrorism and to equate Bin Laden to a 30 year army officer who decided not to be bystander when oppression and injustice are rife- is just plain naive. It is an entirely different situation. As for why Farook Rahman rescinded his earlier bravado (as in this article)- one can only hazard a guess as to why but think about this: Farook Rahman was kept in remand for 29 days after his arrest in Aug 1996, following which he had to be hospitalised- which Amnesty International regarded as a human rights violation. Consider also that the AL government had arrested and incarcerated the innocent wife of Khandaker Abdur Rashid under the SPA (same pretext used for the arrest of Farook Rahman), ref:
As far as I had heard,Farook Rahman had two young daughters and a young son who were left under the care of his old mother and his wife had to flee the country due to harassments- so he had a lot to lose and in a bad way- so if he was being precautious in rescinding his previous bravado statements not to incite the then powerful government would appear to be a reasonable reaction- don’t you think?!!!
Also, consider, if he really did want to deny the coup, he had the opportunity like many others to flee the country and hide- why didn’t he??
Finally, if this case or this article will implicate anything-would be the shedding of light into factors for just cause…as Mir had pointed out- we need not to be mulling over this but rather to consider what we can lean from this to make a better nation.
farook,rashid,dalim,mohiuddin and other killers of bongabondhu are cowards there is doubt these killers deserve what theyve done to mujibs family they shoulde be killed by bangladesh government like the way genaral zia died in chittagonge
Tnx 4 da clue.i got huge job to do abt 1975 and da real history of bangladesh for my new born son.i will addaed it and let my son to knw abt it,inshaAllah. i wish i could get these killer face to face to ask them somefin.
Get a clue – you guys are history suckers! The truth will never be told unless you guys try to find it out for yourself. FYI – Farook was nowhere inside the Mujib’s house, he was actually outside with EMPTY tanks. ONE SENTENCE – HISTORY IS WRITTEN BY THE VICTORS!!!
One more thing – how come when soldiers (or any one else) kill for just cause (mostly in defence) they are not cold-blooded killers??? One-sided , it’s all one-sided. The truth is never one-sided and IT CERTAINLY ISN’T dogmatic like the commentary following the article.
NIN, I guess I would suggest you pick up a law book or a dictionary at your nearest library and look up what it says about “murder”. Maybe that will help you answer the rather basic question you asked. They usually teach this kind of civics lesson in fifth grade.
And, as for Farook’s guilt, nice try on that one. Its hard to explain away the time from August to November when they ruled with their tanks, after the murders. Its kind of hard to explain away their flight to Bangkok in November as they fled en masse from Bangladesh. Facts, unfortunately, can be inconvenient at times when you are trying to whitewash the past.
murder
// (say ‘merduh)
noun 1. Law the unlawful killing of a human being by an act done with intention to kill or to inflict grievous bodily harm, or with reckless indifference to human life.
2. Colloquial an uncommonly laborious or difficult task: gardening in the heat is murder.
–verb (t) 3. Law to kill by an act constituting murder.
4. to kill or slaughter inhumanly or barbarously.
5. to spoil or mar by bad execution, representation, pronunciation, etc.
6. Colloquial to consume (food or drink) with gusto: I could murder a sandwich now.
–verb (i) 7. to commit murder.
–phrase 8. get away with murder, to behave outrageously, illegally, etc., with impunity.
9. like blue murder, Colloquial to a remarkable degree or extent: *And the long and short of it is that I hate dairying like blue murder. –miles franklin, 1901.
10. scream (or yell) (or cry, etc.) blue murder, Colloquial to make a commotion; complain vociferously: *The Supervisor didn’t get to figure that one out just yet because two blokes were belting up the stairs screaming blue murder. –tim winton, 1993. [variant of obsolete murther, from Middle English morther, Old English morþor]
–murderer, noun
–murderess, feminine noun
Read between the lines of what Farook is saying – you say God complex – I say misplaced sense of justice. How funny that you should talk of facts but decided rather conveniently to turn a blind eye to Mujib’s misdemeanours. Convenient to be blind when you are being rather dogmatic and fanatic.
What is coup? And why was this and is this known as a coup – my dictionary referring friend, this is for you:
coup |ko?|
noun ( pl. coups |ko?z|)
1 (also coup d’état) a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government : he was overthrown in an army coup.
2 a notable or successful stroke or move : it was a major coup to get such a prestigious contract.
• an unusual or unexpected but successful tactic in card play.
Also, wonder why there was no great uproar following Mujib’s death? And why a lot of the poor people even expressed a sense of relief? Where are those facts in your one-sided attack?
I will always ask questions and never follow blindly. From Edward Said:
“Above all, critical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy…Texts have to be read as texts that were produced and live on in the historical realm in all sorts of what I have called worldly ways.”
Wow, NIN, congratulations on trying to justify murder. I guess there will always be someone who will try to justify cold-blooded murder, including those of innocent women and children.
I think Farook’s words in the article above speak for themselves. And your words in the comments above also speak for themselves.
Granted from my research it seems that there indeed were a lot of legitimate resesrvations and grievances about the governance of Sheikh Mujib and his BAKSAL political organization (esp. the corruption, inefficiency, and the suppression of democracy and civil liberties), but nevertheless his cold-blooded murder and that of his innocent family cannot be justified under any circumstances. This is simply not how you deal with those whom you disagree with politically. especially to the man regarded as the very father of your nation. “Men” such as AKM Ahmed and Lt. Col. Rahman had what is now referred to as a “savior’s complex” and as such were nothing more than delusional, ruthless murderers and traitors to their nation and their people.
I never justified murder – all I am saying is look at the whole picture rather than just the one side which is what has been perpetuated because there is a refusal to leave the fanaticism of a deluded nationalism or patriotism and a refusal to acknowledge that perhaps there might have been a reason for what had happened.
MASH RE:”Its kind of hard to explain away their flight to Bangkok in November as they fled en masse from Bangladesh. Facts, unfortunately, can be inconvenient at times when you are trying to whitewash the past.” Here’s what you do not know or feign ignorance of (I really don’t know which at this point and I’m accused of whitewashing – GAGGING) – you say “facts” but it seems to me, by your standards they are to you (and all those aligned with a myopic fanaticism for AL etc.) but here’s something you never asked – perhaps – a ‘fact’ – if that fits your definition as they somehow do not matter to those who blindly follow en masse – why did they take off “en masse for Bangkok”? Do you even know the condition they left in? Do you know that Farook left behind his two children for months? And here’s another thing, why was Farook exiled and continuously imprisoned upon his return to Bangladesh?
Who’s really blood-thirsty? All of you so-called lay people sitting in the sidelines cheering on an execution or is it really the soldier who actually did something about the oppression and wrongdoing that ensued after liberation (only it blew up in his face)?
You guys never asked and still never ask questions. They say a good nation deserves a good leader – Bangladesh in almost 4 decades since liberation can barely breath for the corruption that is rife and its predicament regarding the leaders and their political antics – heck this country recently elected and even had candidates that were accused rather openly of corruption etc in the (now failed) efforts by the preceding interim government. My question – democracy at what price? And isn’t freedom a responsibility?
Patriotism should not be blind or fanatical, you love your country – strive to be better, strive to be better by being critical of what is wrong or went wrong in the first place, ask the tough questions.
“..critical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy…” Edward Said
One more thing – and by no certain intention to take over this blog’s comments but just because it’s under my skin- you speak of all those women and children – how about the rape and murder of the couple in Tongi or for that matter the millions that died due to the Rakhi Bahini’s bullying and even from the famine that took so many lives?
Leaders have great responsibilities. This a quote from “Legacy of Blood” -“If he had asked us to eat grass or to dig the earth with our bare hands we would have done it for him. But look how he behaved!” This is Farook on Mujib.
My point, going back to my question, value of life – were those lives more valuable than the ones that were taken to keep one man in power? Please understand, I am by no means saying that what had happened i.e. the taking of innocent lives is inexcusable at any cost, I am just saying – as you (MASH, I believe) Americans put it – “collateral damage” may have been what had occurred.
N.B. Please also read “Bangladesh: A Legacy Of Blood” as well.
http://bangladeshpatriot.blogspot.com/
Perhaps you should read this too.
NIN, I think your comments do a very good job of clarifying your position. I will leave to readers to conclude whether you are justifying murder or not.
I am pretty sure there is not much more I can add to this conversation.
In 1975 August I was in Dhaka College Studying BComm. I was an active JSD member. I have seen Baksal, JRB, and how they terrorized our Common people. But Killing Sk. Mujib was not the answer. We should have changed ourselves to become Patriot, Free from Crime, Bribe, Justice to all citizens, Lust etc. THow I am a Non Muslim, I feel that in Bangladesh, we say something and do Other things and we use Cheap Religious sentiment to Screw other Minoraties. By doing all these we achived not very progress. It is allways good to follow religion, But don’t mis interpreate Religion to your benefits. I found in Bangladesh so far, any problems, Blame it on Minoraties.
I fought 1971 Liberation was as a 1st year Dhaka College Student. I had near relations in India(All very well in Govt and Politics), but since I love Bangladesh like rest of our People I joined Sector 4 as a FF, bearing Sl. No E-7943. I came back to studies after January 18, 1971 so did my Father who was in Bangladesh Zonal Office in Shillong. We suffered and lost everything, and re-started from scratch in anticipation that Country will be equal for every one. I found all the successive Govt’s same like old wine in new bottle. I was refused for a Commission on merely silly ground due to my origin, But happy to report that while coming to Canada after long time I was accepted in their Army and now a Full Col, commanding an elite SSG and not a Tin Soldier like Bangladesh, who like to control their own people.
THerefore I consider Canada to be my Country and Not Bangladesh.
In 1975 August I was in Dhaka College Studying BComm. I was an active JSD member. I have seen Baksal, JRB, and how they terrorized our Common people. But Killing Sk. Mujib was not the answer. We should have changed ourselves to become Patriot, Free from Crime, Bribe, Justice to all citizens, Lust etc. THow I am a Non Muslim, I feel that in Bangladesh, we say something and do Other things and we use Cheap Religious sentiment to Screw other Minoraties. By doing all these we achived not very progress. It is allways good to follow religion, But don’t mis interpreate Religion to your benefits. I found in Bangladesh so far, any problems, Blame it on Minoraties.
I fought 1971 Liberation was as a 1st year Dhaka College Student. I had near relations in India(All very well in Govt and Politics), but since I love Bangladesh like rest of our People I joined Sector 4 as a FF, bearing Sl. No E-7943. I came back to studies after January 18, 1971 so did my Father who was in Bangladesh Zonal Office in Shillong. We suffered and lost everything, and re-started from scratch in anticipation that Country will be equal for every one. I found all the successive Govt’s same like old wine in new bottle. I was refused for a Commission on merely silly ground due to my origin, But happy to report that while coming to Canada after long time I was accepted in their Army and now a Full Col, commanding an elite SSG and not a Tin Soldier like Bangladesh, who like to control their own people.
THerefore I consider Canada to be my Country and Not Bangladesh. Sorry to say, but it is Truth.
bear in mind a killer can never be rehabilatated in any society.
I am sorry to hear colonel B. Sam Sen’s story. Real freedom fighters are not remembered and i guess the real one’s never fought for any materialistic gain. I am a son a freedom fighter who fought from the 26th march till 16th dec and i saw him who never wanted to take any extra credit for his golden contribution during the war.
Bangladesh is a story of misery and pain and no one has paid any attention to those and seeked any real answer to address those issues.
Hence, The moral bankruptcy has made us pay with many atrocities, killings,gross violation of human rights and abuse of power in all spheres of life.
Let us not dwell in the past rather take lessons and eradicate the stigmas and go ahead with the forthcoming impending issues to modernise the country and bring upon mental emancipation for the people.
Let’s get a few things straight here.
First of all, it was under Mujib’s leadership that Bangladesh gained independence.
That being said, having returned to Bangladesh, he had no need to attain a powerful government post…he could have remained President and a figurative Head of State with reduced powers in a parliamentary system of government and Tajuddin Ahmad was quite capable as Prime Minister and should have stayed as such.
Mujib messed up big time. His lust for power, his suspicious nature and his inability to govern caused the situation in Bangladesh to spiral wildly out of control. Even my parents, who supported him wholeheartedly during and after the Liberation War of 1971, knew that he didn’t have long to live when 1975 came around. They were not surprised when they heard of his death. We were living in Nigeria at the time.
Now had I been in Farooq’s position at the time, I would have had Mujib killed myself.
So here’s where Farooq and his troops messed up big time.
He claimed that he was doing this for Islam and Bangladesh. Excuse me, since when was the cold-blooded murder of women and children OK in Islam???
Next came the Idemnity Ordinance signed by President Mushtaq. A true Muslim would never run from justice. He/she would face it head-on. If they had come to power because they wanted to “right” the “wrongs” committed under Mujib, they failed miserably when they put themselves above the law of the land which they claimed that they had come to fix.
Third, the “Jail Killings”. This was nothing short of cold-blooded murder, simple and flat and probably worse than what happened on Aug. 15. They were complicit in this and they knew it, which is why they fled the country on Nov. 3 before the news got out.
They could have been considered to be heroes if they had just killed Mujib and his two worthless sons Kamal and Jamal, and perhaps his brother, Nasser, his nephew, Moni, and his sister’s husband, Serniabat. Farooq’s troops killed Mujib’s bodyguards after the latter had fired first. But once Mujib and the other primary targets had been killed off, the troops could have secured the respective residences without firing another shot.
They could have challenged the court system to bring them to trial while still in the country and not have idemnified themselves. Instead, they got caught up in the old, dirty game of politics.
There was no need to arrest Tajuddin Ahmad and the other Awami League leaders without charging them with specific crimes. Tajuddin had, by then, retired from politics after he criticized Mujib’s government for the same things that Farooq had killed Mujib for.
Instead, Mushtaq basically changed the rules of the game at his whim. Everything that Mushtaq, Farooq and Rashid had done was in line with Islam, according to them. I could not disagree more.
It is Mushtaq, Farooq and Rashid who “betrayed” Islam by trying to manipulate it and deceive all those around them by ptting themselves above the law, and yet they had the gall to continue accusing Mujib and his government of doing the same. I don’t see them as any different from Mujib. Their fear of justice overrode their fear of God. Muslims are supposed to fear God alone and nothing else.
The only martyr here was Tajuddin Ahmad. Here was a man who stood up to Mujib at a time when doing such a thing was inconceivable and was willing to live with the consequences.
The rest of them can all go to hell for all that I care.
One other thing…addressing the events that took place in Dhaka on August 15, 1975, God bless all those who were innocent among the men, women and children. Rest in peace.
I believe that God’s Judgment will befall us all someday. Farooq, Rashid, Mushtaq and Mujib are together and facing it as we sit here.
1st of all, Mujib, the father of the nation, not only because he lead the Bangladeshies out of Pakistanis clout, in addition he helped raise the nation to their full realization as a ‘Bengali Race’. And that is the most grievious offending done to the eyes of the vested interests who are supressing them in the name of islam for thousands of years.
2nd, the new born country, many people wanted and wished to grab the power at any cost. Small or big, known or unknown, many of them were willing to get to the power and they saw Mujib was the only big obstacle in front of them. JSD or Communist party or leftist or Rightist Awamilegueres, they all engaged in conspiracy to remove Mujib or wanted to disgrace him utterly to gain support of general mass and then the ultimate power.
3rd, the experience of mujib govt as a ruler was nil. Forces under disposal were weak and disarrayed, the reactionary force striked naive Mujib before he become organised. He has not even in power for more than three years to judge him in any category.
Finally, Bloods of Mujib actually brought blessings and consolidated the ‘Bengali Race’ as its reckoning for ever, The Pakisni rulers were afraid of this features of Mujib’s killing, they knew about it, however, their colaborators of this country did it without knowing what they did.