Dhaka, Aug 12 (PTI) A special court in Bangladesh on Tuesday rejected a senior lawyer's plea to be the defence counsel of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who is facing charges of “crimes against humanity” in absentia, amid concerns over her proper defence.
“The state has appointed a defence lawyer for Sheikh Hasina. This (matter) is over,” said M Golam Mortuza Mozumder, the chairman of the three-judge International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh (ICT-BD).
“It is up to the tribunal who would be appointed as the defence lawyer,” he said, adding, “why in a particular case where the accused is absent, he (Z I Khan Panna) will come to defend her”.
Mozumder said Panna could have made his request when the state-appointed lawyer was being chosen, instead, “now, when the train has left the station, he came and asked the station master to arrange his boarding”.
Lawyer Naznin Nahar presented Panna’s application before the tribunal, which also rejected his second request to assist the state-appointed defence lawyer.
Hasina and former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal of the ousted Awami League regime were being tried in absentia, while the tribunal earlier appointed a little-known lawyer, Amir Hossain, as the defence counsel for them.
A third accused, former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, in a dramatic move, turned an “approver” to testify against the co-accused.
Panna, who is in his late 70s, is a 1971 veteran and the chairman of the legal aid committee of the Bangladesh Bar Council. Although he was critical of the ousted Awami League regime, he expressed his willingness to defend 76-year-old Hasina.
He frequently censures Muhammad Yunus’s government on social media for changing Bangladesh’s political course by patronising forces who were against the country’s 1971 independence from Pakistan.
British journalist and rights activist David Bergman, linked to Bangladesh through marital connection and observing the developments in the ICT-BD, last week questioned the defence procedure in several statements on social media.
Bergman, known for his critical views against Hasina’s regime, said one lawyer was appointed to defend two accused in the same case, “that creates significant potential conflict of interest problems preventing them each from having a proper defence”.
He wrote that the two accused could clearly have very different interests at the trial, for example, the home minister blaming the prime minister for certain actions or vice-versa, so “each absconding accused must surely have a separate lawyer representing him”.
Bergman also expressed concerns about the time Hossain got to prepare his defence, saying, “the state lawyer for the two accused only received all the evidence relied on by the prosecution on June 25, that is, five weeks before the first day of the trial”.
“I would suggest that it is impossible for any lawyer to be able to undertake the research and other work necessary to devise a proper defence for both clients, particularly when the lawyer has no contact with the client(s),” he said.
The ICT-BD was originally constituted in 2010 to try the hardened collaborators of Pakistani troops in 1971, mostly belonging to the far right Jamaat-e-Islami, which the Yunus administration preferred to the court to try Hasina and leaders of her regime.
A key defence lawyer for Jamaat leaders, Tajul Islam, has been appointed as the chief prosecutor in the changed scenario.
Bergman called it “irony”, adding, “There may well be a much stronger word to describe this!”
The ICT-BD last month charged Hasina with crimes against humanity for ordering a deadly crackdown against a violent movement dubbed the July Uprising led by Students against Discrimination (SAD).
The movement forced Hasina to quit on August 5, 2024, and secretly leave Bangladesh aboard a Bangladesh Air Force plane with military security. Since then, she has been living in India.
Prosecutors allege that Hasina was the “mastermind, conductor and superior commander” of the targeted violence against student-led protests that erupted across Bangladesh.
According to a UN rights office report, some 1,400 people were killed between July 15 and August 15 last year as retaliatory violence continued after the fall of her government.