[Editor’s note: this piece by Dr Ahmed Ziauddin was originally published in the The Daily Star on March 29, 2008. Link. It is our pleasure to be able to republish it here for our readers.] Bangladesh still has not dealt with its past and the past has never left her. For any society, traumatized by…
Read moreThis article is jointly written by Omar Shehab and Farhan Nasim. Photo courtesy: Arif Hafiz On 23rd March The Economistpublished an article titled ‘Justice in Bangladesh: Another kind of crime’ [1] criticizing the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT),Bangladesh. The article starts by dignifying the infamous Eichmann trial, a Second World War Holocaust case, which took place in Jerusalem…
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Without completely overhauling the justice system first, it is not prudent to use the war crime trials as a testing ground for abolition of DP.…
Read moreThis note is in response to a particular status of Toby Cadman which has been brought to my attention today. [here]. Through this status, Mr Cadman responded to an article I wrote on his role in defending Jamaat-E-Islami stalwarts currently being prosecuted at the International Crimes Tribunal (Toby Cadman: a Crusader for Rights or Devil’s…
Read morePro-defence commentators often criticise ICT’s acceptance of “hearsay evidence”. How valid is that criticism? It is true that “hearsay” evidence (eg: newspaper reports, or testimony of people who were not present at the scene of crime) is not an ideal kind of evidence in terms of their quality. However, this principle applies to ordinary criminal…
Read moreHere is the full text of the Order delivered by the Tribunal: (downloadable pdf version available here on ICSF’s E-Library)…
Read moreOn 15 May 2011, ICSF released its position paper on the suggestions of US War Crimes Ambassador Stephen Rapp delivered to the Government of Bangladesh regarding the ICT and its governing statute the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act 1973. It has been prepared by the Legal Research Team of ICSF, one of the 21 such teams…
Read moreShe came like a whirlwind causing a little tsunami in the US capital. The day was March 15, 2011 and the place of occurrence was the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.…
Read moreIn a recently published interview, Lord Avebury seemed to have accepted death penalty as a form of punishment for the perpetrators of 1971 Liberation War, arguing that the same has popular acceptance and support in Bangladesh [..]…
Read more1. We have witnessed how political exploitation hindered the earlier process of war crimes trial. Over the last four decades, politicisation has been used to embed a division within the society for personal and partisan political benefits. This article reviews some of those post-independence schisms and argues why we need to be vigilant to not…
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