A Chittagong tribunal yesterday rejected bail prayer of former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar in two cases relating to 10-truck arms haul in 2004.During half and hour's hearing from 11:30am at Chittagong Metropolitan Special Tribunal-1, counsels for jugged Babar termed pressing charges against their client politically motivated. They sought bail for him on health grounds.
All of the eleven incarcerated accused, including Jamaat-e-Islami chief 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 Babar, were produced before the tribunal at 11:25am.
The two cases -- one for smuggling firearms and the other under the arms act -- were filed a day after ten truckloads of arms and ammunitions were seized at a jetty of Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Ltd in the port city on April 2, 2004.
The court also fixed September 7 for submitting report on execution of arrest warrant against Ulfa leader Paresh Barua, one of the two absconding accused in the cases.
The report on the other runaway, former additional secretary of industries ministry Nurul Amin, was sent to the special tribunal yesterday. But police failed to produce anything on Barua in this regard.
Public Prosecutor Kamal Uddin Ahmad told The Daily Star the court order to arrest Paresh Barua was sent to the foreign ministry to forward it to the separatist leader's village home at Dibrugarh in Indian state of Assam. A copy of the order was sent to the same address by mail.