Azad flees to India
His 2 sons held
Abul Kalam Azad, a fugitive war crimes suspect widely known as Bachchu Razakar, fled to India through the Hili border in Dinajpur on April 2, Rab said yesterday, quoting his detained sons.
Members of Rapid Action Battalion yesterday picked up Azad's elder son Shah Mohammad Faisal Azad, 36, younger son Abul Kashem Muhammad Mushfiq Billah alias Jihad, 34, brother-in-law Kazi Ehtesham-ul Huq Liton, 40, from a house in the capital's Sutrapur around 5:30am and friend Abul Kashem Azad, president of C & F Agent Association, from Hili Port in the evening.
The four were arrested for helping Azad flee the country, said Commander M Sohail, director of Legal and Media wing of Rab.
Azad is facing an arrest warrant for committing crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War. The International Crimes Tribunal-2 had issued the warrant on April 3.
Azad left Dhaka on March 30 and stayed at hotel Capila, owned by Abul Kashem Azad, at Hili Port, added Sohail.
Earlier on Sunday, Azad's daughter Samania Zannati filed a writ petition with the High Court seeking its directives to the government to produce before it two “missing” sons and a brother-in-law of Azad.
Samania claimed that law enforcers had picked up her brothers Faisal and Jihad and maternal uncle Kazi Ehtesham-ul Huq Liton early on Friday from Dhaka and her family still did not know of their whereabouts.
According to the petition, plainclothes members of Detective Branch of police and Rab picked up Faisal and Jihad from the residence of one of their relatives in Gandaria and Ehtesham from his Shyampur home.
The families of the trio have looked for them at different police stations, but police denied any one of them had been detained.
Contacted by The Daily Star, the petitioner's counsel barrister Nasir Uddin Ahmed Ashim said his client had requested some policemen to record a general diary over the incident, but they did not.
The HC bench of Justice Abdul Awal and Justice Md Ashraful Kamal yesterday fixed today for hearing the petition, added Nasir.