ICT not upholding int’l legal standards: HRW

International rights group Human Rights Watch claims Bangladeshi authorities are “failing to uphold international standards” at the International Crimes Tribunal.

In a statement on Tuesday, the group said: “The failures risk denying justice to victims, undermining the rule of law, falsely imprisoning political opponents, and repeating the rights violations of 
the past.”

On Monday, prosecutors submitted charges of crimes against humanity and genocide against 41 people �" including politicians, members of security forces, and journalists accused of human rights violations under Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government.

“Those responsible for the many abuses committed under the Sheikh Hasina government should be appropriately held to account, but many prosecutions are falling short of international fair trial standards,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

“Bangladesh needs to urgently reform its criminal justice system, and the new government should ensure that there is no room for political vendettas through shoddy investigations and arbitrary allegations.”

The tribunal is hearing cases related to the crackdown by security forces on student-led protests during the July Uprising that toppled the Awami League government. 

It is also prosecuting a number of other abuses, including alleged extrajudicial killings and disappearances, committed during Hasina’s rule.

HRW says it is monitoring over a dozen cases at the tribunal and has significant concerns on due process.

“Prosecutors have detained and charged individuals for alleged crimes and in multiple cases relied on witness statements in which incriminating passages appear to have been cut and pasted into multiple statements,” it said.

The tribunal was first established by the Hasina government in 2010 to prosecute crimes against humanity and other war crimes during Bangladesh 1971 Liberation War.

“Those trials, which resulted in six executions, were widely criticised for lack of evidence, political bias, collusion between prosecutors and judges, and absence of basic due process protections,” HRW said.

Since the government changeover following the July Uprising, the interim government amended the law governing the tribunal, allowing it to try additional offences.

The tribunal has completed six trials, convicting 62 people of crimes against humanity. Of these convicts, 42 were tried in absentia, including Hasina herself, and 16 were sentenced to death.

HRW has criticised the amendments to the tribunal law as falling short of “ensuring due process and procedural standards equivalent to international courts dealing with similar offences.”

“The law governing the tribunal still allows prosecutors to order the arrest of individuals without meeting any evidential threshold, to hold detainees for months without written reasons for their detention, and to provide no right of interlocutory appeal to a separate court. Trials can begin three weeks after the prosecution discloses its evidence, leaving little time for adequate defence preparation. Trials in absentia are held without appropriate safeguards including defendants’ right to choose lawyers to represent them. And the tribunal restricts defence lawyers’ ability to cross-examine witnesses,” it added.

HRW also noted the arrest of journalists Mozammel Babu, managing director of Ekattor TV, and Farzana Rupa, a presenter at the network, for their alleged role in covering up the use of excessive force in a crackdown on a protest by Hifazat-e-Islam in May 2013. The two journalists, who worked for a television network that supported the then Awami League government, are accused of helping the government cover up the killings by presenting “false information”.

The journalists’ lawyers told HRW that prosecutors did not provide either of the suspects with a written explanation of the grounds for their arrest, in breach of Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and as required by Bangladesh’s International Crimes (Tribunal) Act.�"bdnews24