Jamaat leaders Nizami and Mojaheed tortured martyred freedom fighter Rumi and musician Altaf Mahmud at a camp of the Mighty Pak Army in Nakhalpara of Dhaka, said a witness before the International Crimes Tribunal-2 yesterday.Rumi and Altaf never came home as Nizami and Mojaheed decided to have them killed, said second prosecution witness and freedom fighter Zahir Uddin Jalal in the war crimes case against Mojaheed.
Jalal was also in the camp and was brutally tortured by Jamaat Ameer Motiur Rahman Nizami
...During the liberation war of 1971, Nizami formed the Al-Badr Force and acted as its supreme commander. The Al-Badr militia took active part in rape, extortion, looting and killing of Bangladeshis who supported the liberation, including a pre-planned massacre on December 14, 1971, when the Al-Badr militia along with Pakistan Army rounded up hundreds of doctors, professors, writers, and other Bengali intellectuals, and executed them...
and Jamaat Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, the witness said.
Mojaheed and Nizami also tortured Jalal's fellow fighters at the camp apart from Altaf and Rumi, son of Shaheed Janani Jahanara Imam, during the Liberation War.
Jalal was lucky to have escaped death as a Pakistain government official rescued him, the witness said.
Jalal had heard Mojaheed and Nizami ask a Pak captain to have Rumi, Altaf and himself killed.
"We assumed that Mojaheed, Nizami and their cohorts had killed them before the proclamation of the President's clemency as we did not get any information about them afterwards," said Jalal.
Jalal, also known as Bichchhu Jalal, yesterday appeared before the Tribunal-2, 41 years after the war, and narrated his horrific ordeal at the camp.
Mojaheed, who was in the dock, listened to the vivid description from the "direct victim" and an eyewitness yesterday. Mojaheed is facing seven charges of crimes against humanity, including murder, genocide and hatching a conspiracy to kill intellectuals during the nine-month-long war.
The 57-year-old witness said he had hurled a grenade at an Al-Badr rally at Chawkbazar, aiming it at Mojaheed on December 4, 1971, and the news of the rally was published with photos in newspapers.
During his four hours and 20 minutes of testimony, Jalal said Nizami, Mojaheed and other Al-Badr men used to torture intellectuals and freedom fighters before killing them at Mohammadpur Physical Training College during the war.