Publisher Dipon Murder 8 Ansar-al-Islam men sentenced to death

The Dhaka Anti-terrorism Special Tribunal on Wednesday sentenced eight members of the banned extremist outfit Ansar-al-Islam, also known as the Ansarullah Bangla Team, to death for murdering Jagriti Prakashani publisher Foysal Arefin Dipon on October 31, 2015.

Judge Mojibur Rahman of the tribunal pronounced the 53-page judgement in a packed courtroom and also fined the convicts Tk 50,000 each.

Six of the convicts Moinul Hasan Shamim, 24, Md Abdus Sabur, 23, Khairul Islam, 24, Md Abu Siddique Sohel, 34, Md Mozammel Hossain Saimon, 25, Md Sheikh Abdullah, 27, all ABT members, heard the verdict from the dock without showing any emotional response.

Ansar-al-Islam leaders — sacked army major Syed Ziaul Haque alias Zia and Akram Hossain — faced the trial in absentia and are still in hiding.

The court found that Ziaul Haque, who trained the extremists and financed the killers, had ordered the murder, Akram planned the killing, Moinul collected weapons, Mozammel took part in the planning and rekeyed the place of occurrence and Abdullah played an important role in murdering the victim.

The court said that the prosecution could prove that all the eight accused in collusion with each other had killed the publisher to implement their common aim to kill Dipon as part of eliminating bloggers, publishers and homosexual activists.

The six detained accused, clad in bulletproof jackets and helmets, were produced before the court at about 11:30am.

Security measures were beefed up in and around the court on the occasion of the pronouncement of the verdict.

The tribunal said that the banned Islamist outfit Ansar-al-Islam members, as a part of what they dubbed as ‘jihad’, had targeted to stop people’s voice by killing secular bloggers, writers and publishers.

It said that the Ansar-al-Islam members’ target was to destroy the state’s democratic and secular character and to curtail people’s freedom of expression by creating panic in society by endangering public safety.

The tribunal observed that the people who could kill anyone for publishing books were enemies of society and the state.

In the judgement, the court said that the convicts had planned to kill Dipon as he published the books of writer-blogger Avijit Roy, who was murdered on Dhaka University campus on February 26, 2015. ‘Nobody can be killed only for his or her opinion and writings.’

The accused, as members of Ansar-al-Islam took part in the murder as part of the organisational effort, they deserved to be given the same punishment, the tribunal said.

‘All the accused have been awarded death sentences and this has ensured justice. On the one hand, it will bring peace in the minds of the victim’s relatives, but on the other hand, others will be frightened and discouraged in committing such heinous crimes in future,’ the tribunal said.

After hearing the verdict in the courtroom, Dipon’s widow Razia Rahman, a physician by profession, said she was satisfied with the judgement and demanded immediate execution of the verdict.

The court’s public prosecutor Golam Sarwar Zakir said that they were happy with the verdict as justice had been served through the verdict.

Defence lawyer Nazrul Islam, however, said that his clients were aggrieved and dissatisfied with the verdict as they did not get justice.

‘My clients will challenge the verdict in the High Court,’ he said, claiming that there was no eyewitness in the case and the court delivered the verdict relying on the accused ones’ confessional statements that they were compelled to give due to torture during interrogation in police custody.

Publisher Dipon, son of Dhaka University professor Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq, was hacked to death at his Jagriti Prakashani office on the second floor of Aziz Super Market on October 31, 2015.

Dipan was hacked twice in the head and once in the neck with a machete, according to the autopsy report.

His widow, Razia Rahman, filed a murder case with Shahbagh police station on November 2, 2015 against unidentified assailants.

On November 15, 2018, the investigation officer of the case submitted a charge sheet against the eight Ansar-al-Islam operatives to the court of Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate and later the case documents were sent to Dhaka Anti- terrorism Special Tribunal.

All six detained accused made confessional statements in the court.

On October 13, 2019, the tribunal indicted the eight accused and their trial ended on January 24.

During the trial, 23 prosecution witnesses were examined.

Just hours before the attack on Dipan, publisher Ahmedur Rashid Tutul and his friends — bloggers Ranadipam Basu and Tareque Rahim — were injured in a machete attack at Tutul’s publishing house ‘Shuddhaswar’ in Lalmatia of the capital.

The publishing houses of Dipon and Tutul had published books written by writer-blogger Avijit Roy, who had been murdered on the campus of Dhaka University eight months earlier while returning from the Ekushe Boimela on February 26, 2015.

A number of self-proclaimed free thinkers and secular bloggers including Avijit Roy, Washiqur Rahman, Ananto Bijoy Das and Niloy Neel, LGBT activists Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy as well as worshippers and priests belonging to minority faiths were killed allegedly by religious extremist outfits  in the country between 2015 and 2016.

News Courtesy:

https://www.newagebd.net/article/129766/8-ansar-al-islam-men-sentenced-to-death