Family members of 13 army officers executed under a controversial court martial in 1981 observed their 29th death anniversary yesterday as a recently released documentary sparked fresh debates about the procedures and motive of the trial.<\/p>\n
Family sources said they observed the death anniversaries of the 13 officers, mostly 1971 veterans, in a low profile with milad mahfils and prayers as the day coincided with Eid holidays.<\/p>\n
Twelve of the officers were hanged for their alleged involvement in the May 30 killing of president Ziaur Rahman after a hasty trial in a military court that completed the trial process only in 18 days.<\/p>\n
The 13th officer was hanged two years later as he was being treated for bullet wounds he had received during the May 30 incident in Chittagong.<\/p>\n
The army prosecutors, who were appointed to defend the suspected officers and whose ranks ranged between lieutenants and brigadier generals, later called it a ‘farcical trial’ as they were denied the minimal opportunity to defend them in line with Army Act.<\/p>\n
The four-episode and 10-hour long documentary titled ‘Bloodbath in the Military of Bangladesh (1975-1981)’, released in July this year dedicating the last two parts to the 1981 incident, came up with several evidence indicating innocence of the 13 officers.<\/p>\n
The documentary, mainly based on interviews of the military people, including investigators and prosecutors, found that the accused were denied their rights for self-defence while the “motivated” investigators used brute force on them to obtain statements they had wanted ahead of and during the trial.<\/p>\n
The documentary, produced by journalist Anwar Kabir, was shown as a reference recently before the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court during a hearing on a presidential reference on a different issue.<\/p>\n
The senior most officer to walk to the gallows was Brig Gen Mohsin Uddin Ahmed<\/strong> and the junior most was Lt Mohammad Rafiqul Hassan Khan<\/strong>, who was only 23 at that time.<\/p>\n The other officers were Col Nawajesh Uddin, Col M Abdur Rashid, Lt Col AYM Mahfuzur Rahman, Lt Col M Delwar Hossain, Lt Col Shah Md Fazle Hossain, Maj AZ Giashuddin Ahmed, Maj Rawshan Yazdani Bhuiyan, Maj Kazi Mominul Haque, Maj M Mojibur Rahman, Capt Mohammad Abdus Sattar and Capt Jamil Haque<\/strong>.<\/p>\n According to documents and references, the officers were arrested in between June 1 and 3 in 1981 while the court martial chaired by Maj Gen Abdur Rahman began at Chittagong Central Jail on July 10 and ended on July 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Family members of 13 army officers executed under a controversial court martial in 1981 observed their 29th death anniversary yesterday as a recently released documentary sparked fresh debates about the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1097,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1050,"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/1050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shahed.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}