BNP's rejoinder, our reply

The BNP has issued a rejoinder to our report headlined “Huji kingpin Mufti Hannan Hanged” published on April 13. For better understanding of our readers, we have numbered each paragraph of the rejoinder and replied accordingly.

BNP'S REJOINDER (TEXT UNEDITED)

1. Our attention has been drawn to the news headline captioned “Huji kingpin Mufti Hannan Hanged” on April 13, 2017 published in your esteemed daily written by Mr. Shariful Islam and Shakhawat Liton. We are extremely annoyed with some portion of the feature which wrongly mentioned the involvement of some BNP leaders with the grenade attack on Awami League rally on 21 August 2004 where many AL leaders and workers were killed. We strongly condemn the motive of this feature to link BNP and its leaders. BNP is a liberal, democratic political party. It has no connection with any sort of militancy or militants. Mr. Shariful Islam and Shakhawat Liton have deliberately tried to malign the image of BNP on the basis of a supplementary charge sheet which was filed by CID only to frame the BNP leaders with the heinous crime that took place on August 24, 2004.

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2. In order to disgrace the BNP leaders they brought the issue of grenade attack and linked BNP leaders with Mufti Hannan. We would like to mention that Mufti Hannan was awarded a plot of land in state-run Gopalganj BSCIC by the then Awami League government where he set up a factory named 'Sonar Bangla Chemical' which was producing explosives. It is alleged that Mufti Hannan organized a militant group to establish Islam in Bangladesh during Awami League regime. Mufti Hannan was charged with allegation that he planted a bomb in a field where Sheikh Hasina was scheduled to address. Awami League government did not arrest him neither banned his party HUJI-Bangladesh. On the other hand they framed charges against Mr. Tariqul Islam, a former minister of BNP, and Taimur Alam Khandakar, a senior leader of BNP, in that case. Mufti Hannan later claimed that two Awami League leaders AL's Religious Affairs Secretary Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Gopalganj District unit's Joint General Secretary Mahbub Ali Khan-before a crowd of journalists who were waiting at the premises of Gopalganj district court and alleged that duo were the mastermind behind the plot to kill Sheikh Hasina at Kotalipara in 1999. This news was published on May 14, 2010 in The Daily Star. It was not AL but BNP banned HUJI. Mufti Hannan was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003 in absentia.

Later, Mufti Hannan was arrested by RAB officials during the BNP rule in October 2005.

3. As regards the grenade attack on 21 August 2004 case, we would like to remind the writers of the feature that the BNP leaders were inducted in the case through a supplementary charge sheet after long time on the basis of a confessionary statement made by Mufti Hannan after 120 days of remand by police. After the remand Mufti Hannan stated in the court that he was severely tortured while in remand and forced to make that statement. This news was published in many newspapers at that time.

4. We reiterate to mention that BNP and BNP leaders had no link with Mufti Hannan or any other militant organisation. The story to link BNP leaders with Mufti Hannan is totally untrue, baseless and motivated.

We hope that The Daily Star would publish our rejoinder to remove misunderstanding among the people.

Thanking you in anticipation of your highest cooperation.

Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir

Secretary General

Bangladesh Nationalist Party-BNP

OUR REPLY

1. First, we thank the BNP, as the party itself cited the supplementary charge sheet of the August 21 grenade attack case as the source of parts of our report that the party objected to.

 The supplementary charge sheet said the August 21 grenade attack was the outcome of a collaboration between Huji men, influential leaders of the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami, and some officials of the home ministry, police, Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, National Security Intelligence and Prime Minister's Office.

The names of some BNP and Jamaat leaders and ex-top police and intelligence officials were included in the supplementary charge sheet submitted by the CID. 

In our report, we just reproduced some information from the charge sheet.

In addition, we used the statement Mufti Hannan made before a court after his arrest in 2005. Hannan claimed that law enforcers were not supposed to arrest him since some influential ministers of the BNP-led government had assured him that he would be exempted from the August 21 grenade attack case.

2. The claims the BNP made in paragraph-2 were not part of our report.

However, we checked the claims.

Talking to The Daily Star on Sunday, the BSCIC officials in Gopalganj said Mufti Hannan was never allocated any plot. His brother Munshi Anisul Islam was given a plot where he set up a factory to produce candles. The allocation of the plot was cancelled after the incident of planting a bomb near Sheikh Hasina's rally venue in Kotalipara in July 2000.  

The BNP's another claim that Hannan said some local AL leaders in Gopalganj were behind the plot to kill Hasina in 2000 was correct. We checked it and found Hannan, who was sentenced to life term in absentia in 2003 in the case over planting the bomb, made the accusation in May 2010.

3. What the BNP said in paragraph-3 of the rejoinder was also not part of our report.

However, we checked the party's claim. On behalf of Hannan, a petition was filed with a court in September 2011 for withdrawing his additional confessional statement in the August 21 grenade attack case, alleging that he gave the statement under duress.

He gave the additional statement in April 2011. Later, the CID submitted the supplementary charge sheet in the case.

Hannan only sought to withdraw his additional confessional statement, not his first confessional statement. In his first confessional statement in 2007, he confessed that he and his aides carried out the grenade attack.

However, the petition was flawed. It was submitted without any authorisation from the jail authorities. Hannan didn't even seek permission from the court for submitting the petition. It was found that Hannan himself didn't put his signature on the petition.

4. Our report didn't say anything about the BNP's or its leaders' links with other militant organisations.