<i>Probes politicised</i>
As new findings confirm link of some Islamist militants and a BNP deputy minister to the grenade attack on an Awami League rally in 2004, all past investigations and other actions of the then BNP-Jamaat alliance government now stand as a model of moral bankruptcy.
Through multiple investigations, the alliance government tried to establish that the AL killed its own leaders and activists to tarnish the image of the government. They also tried to prove that "foreign enemies" instigated the carnage and some listed criminals absconding in India had staged the attack.
Eleven days after the grisly grenade attack aimed to assassinate the then opposition leader Sheikh Hasina, the then premier and BNP chief Khaleda Zia pinned the blame on AL leaders.
Fifty months into the attack, a Dhaka court yesterday framed charges against 22 people, including a deputy minister of Khaleda's government and a former BNP lawmaker.
Rest of the accused are leaders and operatives of outlawed Islamist militant outfit Harkatul Jihad al Islami (Huji).
Interestingly, the former PM, three weeks into the attack, said during a BNP parliamentary party meeting that no Islamist extremist groups existed in the country.
"We have to prove that we don't patronise Islamist extremists and that no such groups exist in the country," said Khaleda accusing the then main opposition AL of conspiring to tarnish the country's image.
Ten days before that speech, Khaleda said the attack was part of conspiracy to tarnish her administration's image and divert public attention from her government's success.
"As investigations are on into the incident, I won't name anyone. But I do know for sure that there was a plot, which is still being nursed," Khaleda told her party meeting on September 2, 2004.
Besides, less than a month into the attack, the BNP legislators in parliament in presence of Khaleda pinned blamed AL for perpetrating the grisly attack on its own rally endangering the life of its own chief.
Twenty-four people were killed and over 300 maimed in that August 21 attack.
Meanwhile, the one-member judicial probe committee of Justice Joynul Abedin, which the then government formed a few days into the attack, claimed in its 162-page report to have identified perpetrators of the massacre.
The report has never been made public.
"The incident is a naked attack on independence and sovereignty of the country," the commission chief told reporters after submitting the report in October 2004.
His probe report pinned the blame on a "foreign enemy", but the investigators have so far failed to substantiate it.
The alliance government's stance subsequently influenced the then investigators to weave a story involving Mokhlesur Rahman, a ward-level AL leader and former ward commissioner of Moghbazar in the capital.
The investigators also attempted to feed the public another woven story through an ostensible confessional statement made by a petty criminal Joj Miah, who named Mokhlesur as one of the planners.
Joj's very weakly woven statement drew media criticism, finally making it appear as blatantly meritless. He himself turned out to be a creation of the investigators' well practiced imagination when his sister revealed to the media that Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had been paying his family Tk 2,500 a month for upkeep since the arrest.
Based on statements by Joj and two others, all of who had made almost identical confessions, the CID investigators even attempted to submit a charge sheet. But the government held it back following media flak terming Joj's story very sketchy.
Apart from Mokhlesur and Joj, 18 others were arrested and tortured severely. Finally, a Dhaka court ordered their release as the charges brought against them by the erstwhile investigators were baseless.
Besides local investigation, the government allowed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Interpol to probe the attack, but people are still in dark about their findings.
The Interpol report with details of the attack was attached to the charge sheets and was also submitted to the government, CID officials say. They say the FBI, which had taken some pieces of evidence for test and returned those later, did not submit any report.
Despite the charge sheets against 22, many serving and retired investigators, who were involved at different stages of the investigations, told this correspondent that the masterminds behind the attack remain undetected even after charges have been pressed in two cases filed in this connection.
"The gravity of the attack indicates it was not possible to be carried out without backing of any influential group or some most powerful people. But we don't see any such findings," an investigator, who was assigned soon after the attack and discharged his duty for quite a long time, told The Daily Star in August.
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