A K M Mohiuddin Ahmed
The family of a Bangladesh Army major convicted for killing the country’s founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is making emotional appeals for asylum in Canada after the US decided to deport him.
A K M Mohiuddin Ahmed has lost his last appeal to stay on in the US, where he entered on a tourist visa in 1996 and stayed on illegally.
Now his family and friends have appealed to Canada to grant him asylum as the US is set to deport him back to Bangladesh, where he could face the death sentence.
If Mohiuddin is allowed into Canada, he would be the fourth man in the group of “killers” allowed into the country.
“Please allow my father to come to your country,” Sabrina Ahmed, Mohiuddin’s daughter, said at a news conference.
“I stand by him and I will stand with him until his last breath,” his wife, Hena Mohiuddin, said, according to IANS.
Son Rouben Ahmed said: “I want Canada to do the right thing. Canada has a humanitarian history. Canada would know this is not right.”
Mohiuddin has been declared a fugitive after he was tried in absentia and convicted in 1998 for his part in a military-led coup on Aug 15, 1975. Twenty-eight people, including Mujib, most of his relations and political supporters were killed that morning.
Mohiuddin is one of the many former soldiers, dubbed “killer majors”, who is at large after being given safe passage. Some of them were given diplomatic assignments and now live outside Bangladesh.
Mohiuddin’s last chance to remain in the US look like it ended this month when San Francisco’s 9th Circuit Court refused to hear his case again. However, at press time, his lawyers were filing papers for another appeal.
The State Department has ruled that his trial in Dhaka followed due process, even though the department’s most recent report on human rights found the Bangladeshi court system was “plagued by corruption” and hampered by witness tampering, victim intimidation and missing evidence.
The San Francisco court ruled that Mohiuddin “assisted or participated” in the persecution of others for political reasons and said the coup was “an act of terrorism”, something viewed gravely in the US.
Others involved in the coup in Canada now are Lt. Colonel Noor Chowdhury, Captain Kismat Hasem and Captain Nazmul Hossain Ansari.
A Canadian Immigration and Refugee board had earlier this year said Lt. Colonel Noor Chowdhury, 57, should not be deported back to Bangladesh because he faces the death sentence in his homeland.
Chowdhury was identified in a secret hearing as “C” where it was determined that he participated in the coup by “walking into the victim’s home and killing him,”
The board said he faces death if deported to Bangladesh.
“Removal to Bangladesh was not foreseeable as long as the death sentence remained in effect,” the board said, according to one media report.
Captain Kismat Hasem and Captain Nazmul Hossain Ansari whom Bangladesh says were involved in the coup fled to Canada after years on the run.
The two have since obtained citizenship - one lives in Ottawa, the other in Montreal.
Rahman, popularly known as “Sheikh Mujib,” led Bangladesh’s independence war against Pakistan in 1971. He was gunned down at his Dhaka residence by military men who also killed most of his family and a number of trusted aides.
After the incident Rahman’s killers granted themselves amnesty using the infamous Indemnity Ordinance.
In 1996, Rahman’s surviving daughter, Sheik Hasina, became prime minister of Bangladesh and the government decided to pursue the fugitives.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International has urged Canada to grant asylum to Mohiuddin, days after his daughter made an emotional appeal
The international human-right watchdog called upon the Canadian government “to ensure that he (Mohiuddin) is not returned to Bangladesh to face the death penalty”.
A similar plea was also made by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.
