Until then, the court recorded the depositions of only 72 out of the 491 prosecution witnesses. Over the next one year, only 26 more witnesses testified.
Last year, on the tenth anniversary of that deadly attack on an Awami League rally in Dhaka, the prosecution again hoped that trial would end before the next anniversary, that is today.
In the last one year, the court recorded the statements of another 78 witnesses, taking the tally to 176 since the trial began in 2008.
Pro-Awami League lawyer and former Dhaka Bar president Kazi Nazibullah Hiru told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday: "The slow pace of the trial has angered the victims and their families. Even the prime minister is astonished at the slow pace of the trial."
He also said: "There is no need to make all the witnesses testify. The testimonies of more than 100 witnesses are enough to prove the charges against the accused as many video clips are also available as evidence."
At least 24 people, including Awami League's women affairs secretary Ivy Rahman, wife of late president Zillur Rahman, were killed and 300 others injured in the grenade attack.
About a dozen grenades were went
kaboom!when
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums..
, now prime minister then opposition leader, was about to finish her speech at the anti-terrorism rally in front of the Awami League's central office. She escaped a close call and has since been living with hearing impairment.
The other victims -- many of whom have been crippled for life by grenade splinters -- and their families have now been waiting for more than a decade now, hoping to see the trial end and the perpetrators get punished.
The slow pace at which the case had been moving along has only added to their ever mounting frustration.
Awami League leader M Ata Ullah, a victim, testified before the court seeking exemplary punishment for the attackers. He was present at the rally on that day.