Source: Jerusalem Post.com
By ANAND KUMAR
(The writer is associate fellow in the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi.)
n the ongoing war crime trials in Bangladesh 10 top leaders of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami and two leaders of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) are being tried. The verdicts in three cases have come and the remaining ones are likely to come in next one month or so. While it is extremely necessary to punish the war criminals in Bangladesh to set the record of history in that country straight, it is equally important for the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government to keep a check on the law-and- order situation. A serious decline in law and order would defeat the very purpose of the war crime trials which are nearing completion.
It is believed that extremists elements arose in Bangladesh because they were not brought to book in the aftermath of the liberation war. Sheikh Muzib-ur-Rahman, father of the Bangladeshi nation under whose leadership the war of liberation was fought, himself gave amnesty to these war criminals.
Categories: Asia, Bangladesh