Convicted war criminal Mueen Uddin sues UK home secretary over libel damages: report
Chowdhury Mueen Uddin, a convicted war criminal living in the UK, has sued British Home Secretary Priti Patel for £60,000 in libel charges after she shared a report on Twitter linking him to war crimes during Bangladesh's Liberation War in 1971, reports Daily Mail.
According to the lawsuit filed by him, the Challenging Hateful Extremism document by the Commission for Countering Extremism was shared on the British Home Office's Twitter account, which has almost one million followers, and retweeted by Priti Patel and others -- including BBC journalist Mishal Husain and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.
He alleged that the report libeled him by claiming him responsible for serious criminal offences, including crimes against humanity, the Daily Mail report read.
He claimed that publication of the Home Office's report and the Commission's failure to contact him before publishing the allegations have caused him severe distress and embarrassment.
Mueen Uddin also claimed that the report had seriously harmed his reputation and that he suffered further when the Home Secretary's lawyers wrote to him in February.
A Home Office spokesman told Daily Mail that since the Home Office is the sponsoring department for the Independent Commission for Countering Extremism, they were unable to make any comment while legal proceedings are ongoing.
The International Crimes Tribunal-2 in Bangladesh in November 2013 handed down death penalty to Mueen Uddin for crimes against humanity conducted in 1971.
Immediately after December 16, 1971, when Bangladesh achieved victory in the war, Mueen -- a leader of the infamous Al-Badr Bahini -- fled Bangladesh and emerged as a leader of the Muslim community in the UK.
Despite being a fugitive war criminal, he managed to get British citizenship and became the vice-chairman of East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre, and a director of Muslim spiritual care provision in the National Health Service of the UK.
Mueen Uddin, now 71, however, insisted that he did not commit war crimes, has no link with the perpetrators of the 1971 war and the leadership of the Jamaat-e-Islami's UK branch, and has never been a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami political group.
He also said that the International Crimes Tribunal, which handed him death penalty, has been "widely condemned and discredited," according to the Daily Mail report.