Truth blocked out

President Ziaur Rahman was assassinated in Chittagong on May 30, 1981. Two days later, General Manzur was murdered. Facts related to the planned killing of Manzur show how top military leaders at the time desperately tried to bury the truth behind the Zia killing and how it helped them seize power. Manzur was the unsuspecting victim of their duplicity, which has become evident from the depositions of witnesses and the accused and from some authoritative books on the killing.
All these years since June 1981, justice for Manzur and his family has remained elusive.

As Major General Abul Manzur was being taken to Hathazari police station on his surrender to the police at Fatikchhari in the afternoon of June 1, 1981, he asked Abdus Sattar, assistant director of NSI, to produce him in court.
"I know I may be sentenced to death. But I will name those who were involved in this conspiracy [the mutiny in which President Ziaur Rahman was assassinated]," he told the NSI official, who was on the police team which spearheaded the drive to arrest Gen Manzur after he had left Chittagong cantonment following Zia's assassination.  
Manzur and Sattar were on the rear seat of the vehicle carrying them to Hathazari police station from Fatikchhari.
Manzur could not reveal the truth behind the mutiny as he was not produced in court. He was thus denied a trial.
Even a few hours after the assassination of Zia on May 30, Manzur made a phone call to Major General Moinul Hossain Chowdhury, the then adjutant general of the army. Gen Moin was not in his office room. He was in the office of General Nur Uddin, the then chief of general staff. Manzur then called Nur Uddin's office and had a brief conversation with Moin.
"I will give you the details about the killing of General Ziaur Rahman. Right at this moment, please ensure that everybody shows restraint in Dhaka and nobody engages in bloodshed and conflict. I can't tell you more now. There are some problems here," said Manzur. He could not finish saying what he intended to say, for the phone line was disconnected.
Gen Moin could not know details of the incident from Manzur. Neither could he understand what had happened to Manzur when the latter was talking to him on the telephone.
Around a decade later, in 1990, did Gen Moin come to know that Manzur had been surrounded and kept under pressure by junior officers, when he was talking to him in the morning of May 30.   
The report of a court of inquiry he received later gave Moin some intriguing information. The inquiry was carried out to ensure the pensions of some personnel of the president's guard regiment who had either been killed or injured in the process of the assassination of President Zia in Chittagong.
The submissions made by two members of the president's guard regiment were significant. They told the court of inquiry that after the killing of Gen Zia, the mutineers moved the guard regiment members to Chittagong cantonment from the Circuit House.
Before getting them on to the vehicle, the mutineers warned them against talking to anybody in the cantonment. If the GOC, in this case Gen Manzur, asked them anything about the incident at the Circuit House on that night [in which Zia was killed], they were instructed to say that they could not see who had opened fire at the Circuit House owing to stormy weather and darkness.
The conversation with Manzur and the findings of the court of inquiry led Moin to the firm belief that Manzur was not involved in the assassination of President Zia and that even the plot to kill the president had been beyond Manzur's knowledge.  
But immediately after the assassination of the president early on May 30, the army headquarters began spreading false information about him by branding him as the leader of the mutiny. He was held responsible for the assassination of Zia.
Manzur, it may be noted, had warm relations with Zia and had assisted him immensely in consolidating his authority over the country.
In November 1975, Zia had summoned Manzur, who was in New Delhi as military adviser at the Bangladesh High Commission, to Dhaka and take over as chief of general staff (CGS) of the army. They were good friends at the time and Zia trusted him.
But their relations began going downhill within two years. After the second sepoy mutiny in October 1977, Gen Zia undertook a wide ranging reorganisation of the army to consolidate his position in the force. He transferred Manzur to Chittagong as GOC, 24th Infantry Division, and Area Commander of Chittagong. This sudden transfer annoyed Manzur.
Subsequently, the gap between the two veteran freedom fighters widened. They were both commanders of two separate sectors during the War of Liberation in 1971. In the late 1970s, Manzur did not support Zia's move to rehabilitate anti-liberation forces in politics by providing them with important positions in the civil and military administration.
The conspirators took full advantage of this slide in relations between Manzur and Zia in planning and executing their mission. Manzur fell prey to the situation.
Since Manzur's murder at Chittagong cantonment, his family has been denied justice for decades. No case was filed against the murder until 1995.
After the political changeover, a case was filed on August 28, 1995 during the tenure of the then BNP-led government, and the trial began after the Awami League-led government came to power in 1996.
Former military dictator HM Ershad is the prime accused in the case. Other co-accused are Maj Gen (retd) Abdul Latif, Lt Col (retd) Shamsur Rahman Shams, Maj (retd) Kazi Emdadul Haque and Lt Col (retd) Mostafa Kamaluddin Bhuiyan.

Interestingly, court proceedings against two other accused, Gen Latif and Col Shams, have been stayed since 2009 in light of a High Court order.
There has been no significant progress in the case since the beginning of the trial.
But it suddenly gathered momentum in July last year after Jatiya Party chief HM Ershad, who is the prime accused in this case, refused to extend support to the AL-nominated mayoral candidate in the Gazipur City Corporation election.
Both the prosecution and the defence placed their arguments in court in July last.
Hearing in the case resumed in November. And on completion of the hearing in January this year, the court fixed February 10 as the date for delivery of the verdict.
Before the date of judgement, however, national politics took a different turn. Following negotiations with the government, Ershad's Jatiya Party participated in the January 5 parliamentary polls held amid a boycott by the BNP-led alliance. The JP emerged as the main opposition in parliament. Ershad was also made special envoy to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina with the status of a minister.
Ershad's Jatiya Party had also extended support to the Sheikh Hasina-led government in 1996. His party had become a component of the AL-led alliance before the December 29, 2008 parliamentary elections and was a partner of the ruling alliance for five years.
However, the Manzur murder case faced some new twists with the time for a delivery of the verdict coming closer.  
Judge Begum Hosne Ara Aktar, who was supposed to deliver the verdict on February 10, was transferred on January 29. Her transfer was yet another reminder of the story of transfer of judges dealing with the case over the years.  
The case has seen, rather amazingly, 22 judges taking charge of it and then departing since it was filed on August 28, 1995. The judges were either promoted or transferred to other districts.
Instead of pronouncing the verdict, the new judge in the case, Khondker Hasan Md Firoz, on February 10 decided to hear the arguments afresh on February 27, terming the case "old" and sensational."  
Moreover, the statements of 28 prosecution witnesses had not been properly written, the judge added.
“So I shall have to scrutinise all the documents of the case and hear both the prosecution and the defence.”
But on February 27, state prosecution prayed for a further probe into the case. The court responded to the prayer. It asked the CID to come up with a report on April 22 after further inquiry into the case.
Interestingly, the prosecution secured the court order for further investigation on the claim that there had been "some flaws and inadequacies" in the previous inquiry conducted by the CID around two decades ago.
But the prosecution was unable to specify any "flaw and inadequacy" in its petition filed before the court seeking the order. It has rather put the responsibility on the CID to this effect.
The prevailing situation has puzzled the Criminal Investigation Department, prompting it to write to the prosecution requesting it to cite the said "flaws and inadequacies."
The prosecution refrained from responding to the CID's letter.
A prosecutor, however, made a phone call to a senior CID official and asked him to find "some loopholes" in the case, said sources concerned.
On insistence by The Daily Star, Special Public Prosecutor Asaduzzaman Khan Rochi, who in a surprising move filed the petition on February 27, said he had no knowledge about any flaw in the previous investigation.
"So, I have talked to the CID and asked them to find the flaws, if there are any," said Rochi.
A source close to the prosecution, however, said the prosecution had acted on the advice of government policymakers.
Asked about it, Rochi declined to make any comment.   
On receipt of a copy of the court order, the CID assigned Abdul Kahhar Akond, special police superintendent of the department, with the task of carrying out further investigation into the much sensational case.
It was Kahhar who extensively investigated the Manzur murder case for around six months in 1995 and submitted a probe report in the same year.  
“On receiving the court order, we have started studying the more than decade old documents of the case to see if there is anything new that could be found," Akond told The Daily Star.
A source in the CID yesterday said they (CID) may seek to the court an extension of time by three months even though the court had asked it to submit the further probe report today. If the extension is granted, the case may land in further uncertainty.
 [This report was prepared on the basis of the depositions of witnesses in the Manzur murder case and the court proceedings of the case as well as the books, "Silent Witness of a General" by Major General Moinul Hossain Chowdhury, and 'Assassination of Ziaur Rahman and the Aftermath' by Ziauddin M Chowdhury.]