Editorial
Arrest of militants is a welcome act
The godfathers behind the crime must be apprehended
The arrest of nine militants allegedly involved in the grisly grenade attacks on an Awami League rally on August 21, 2004 reopens the old question of who planned and executed the diabolical act. It is certainly creditable on the part of the Rapid Action Battalion that its members were able to nab these extremists and thereby give the nation a fresh new opportunity of going into the core of the dastardly incident three years ago.
These new arrests bring to the fore a number of questions that have long been raised by the nation and yet not been answered by those who were at the helm of affairs at the time. The public perception remains that the investigations that were initiated by the BNP-led four-party government were from the beginning hampered by a lack of seriousness on its part. Indeed, there have been suspicions all along that attempts were made to divert the course of the investigations. Included among these diversions was the hauling up of a young man from a cyber café on charges of involvement in the attacks. Sometime later, it was given out that another individual had been nabbed and had in fact confessed to his participation in the plot. And all the while it was made sure that evidence of the crime at the place where the blasts took place was wiped out. Undetonated grenades at the site were swiftly destroyed and within days the whole area was wiped clean, leaving little or nothing for investigators, including those from abroad, to work on. The fact that the government constituted a one-man inquiry commission under Justice Joynal Abedin did not help either because of the perfunctory manner in which the commission worked. It may be noted that the report the commission eventually submitted on the incident was never made public by the Khaleda Zia government.
It is against such a sordid background of inquiry and investigation that the present turn of events causes fresh new hope to arise among the public about a judicious inquiry into the August 2004 attacks. While we are glad that the nine extremists have been arrested, we also realise that the RAB operations to net others involved in the crime will continue. The country must get to the bottom of the entire issue. That point can be reached when the godfathers behind the crime are apprehended and made to face justice.
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