Dhaka/New Delhi, Oct 15 (PTI): Former premier Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on Wednesday cautioned interim government chief Muhammad Yunus against antagonising the army over the issue of the trial of military officers in a civil tribunal.
Salahuddin Ahmed, the party’s standing committee member, told Yunus during an emergency meeting with political parties that “we (BNP) want you to maintain a good relation with the armed forces”.
“The state (Bangladesh) must remain in a balanced position,” he added.
“We don’t want to draw any risk as we will not be able to afford it,” Ahmed said, ahead of the planned general election in February next year.
Earlier in the evening, Yunus hurriedly called the emergency meeting with political parties amid discord among them over the implementation of a declaration dubbed as the July Charter, that his government drafted proposing a series of reforms in different sectors.
Ahmed said the “fallen autocrats” and their accomplices, an oblique reference to deposed premier Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League regime, could take advantage of the discords between the armed forces and the interim government.
“So, we must not emerge as counter revolutionaries and take decisions considering the reality,” he said.
Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) last week issued arrest warrants against 16 serving army officers and 14 others, including Hasina, for their alleged role in “enforced disappearances or abduction and torture of political dissidents” during the past regime.
The army said they took into “military custody” 15 of the 16 officers soon after the ICT-BD issued arrest warrants but declined to have received any copy of any warrant amid anxious speculations over their trial in a civil court under the ICT-BD Act instead of a court-marshal under the Army Act.
ICT-BD Chief Prosecutor Tajul Islam demanded their court appearance for two consecutive days after the army announcement but the military has visibly ignored the call so far.
The government, meanwhile, declared a building inside Dhaka Cantonment as a “makeshift prison” without detailing its purpose while a sense of unease visibly gripped Bangladesh over their trial.
Bangladesh Army’s adjutant general Major General Mohammad Hakimuzzaman told a press conference on Saturday said 16 of their officers were asked to report to army headquarters and 15 of them responded and they were kept in military custody.
He said the one remaining, a major general who served as the deposed premier’s military secretary, went into hiding, but steps were taken to prevent his departure abroad.
During the late Wednesday meeting, the BNP leader told Yunus that his party’s support to his administration was a “conditional” one and it was “not limitless”.
“We had our continuous support for you and it will continue but this support is not limitless, we have a border line. We are extending our support to you within this line for graduation to democracy. Please try to realise this,” Ahmed said.
Bangladesh’s largest Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, the student-led National Citizen Party (NCP), which was floated visibly with Yunus’s blessings in February, the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) and several other groups joined the talks with the National Consensus Commission (NCP), headed by the chief adviser himself.
Yunus’s administration disbanded the Awami League until its leaders were tried for their “misdeeds” while the Election Commission suspended its registration, disqualifying the party from contesting the polls.
A violent student-led street campaign dubbed as July Uprising ousted the Awami League government on August 5, 2024, when Hasina left for India and three days later Yunus flew in from Paris and took charge of the interim government.
Yunus’s administration amended the ICT-BD law to try the leaders of the past regime, including Hasina, appointing Tajul Islam as its chief prosecutor.
The ICT-BD was formed by the past government to try hardened collaborators of the Pakistani troops during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War, when Tajul Islam appeared as a key lawyer to defend the accused.
Most Awami League leaders and key figures of the past government are now in jail or on the run at home and abroad but its activists and supporters are trying to make visible their presence in the field staging flash street marches in Dhaka and elsewhere. PTI AR GSP GSP
(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)
