August 21, 2004

BARRING the gruesome killing of Bangabandhu and most of his family on August 15, 1975, there has been no other more horrific incident than the ghastly bomb attack on the Awami League rally which targeted the party leadership on this day ten years ago. Although more than twenty people were killed, including Ivy Rahman, and more than two hundred injured, and some of them are still carrying the scars of the injury, it was by providence that the then leader of the opposition and the present Prime Minster, and all her senior colleagues, escaped unhurt.

We had all along believed that the August 21, 2004, grenade attack was not the work of religious extremists; the motivation was entirely political, and which was to take out the AL leadership. And our conviction has been proved correct. We know now how state apparatus including the intelligence agencies were allegedly used to perpetrate the attack. And it was with absolute horror and revulsion that we saw the investigation being distorted to present the incident as being the result of an internecine conflict of the AL. The investigation was so corrupted that even perpetrators were manufactured to shield the real culprits.

August 21, 2004, grenade attack was the manifestation of a culture of murder to settle differences between major political parties. We hope that was the last and that it will never be repeated.