One of those indicted for war crimes during the Bangladesh civil war, Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin who fled to Britain, has been sentenced by a Bengali court to death, for his part in massacres during that time.
Sky News said:
“A Muslim leader living in London has been sentenced to death after being found guilty of war crimes in his native Bangladesh.
Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, who was involved in setting up the Muslim Council of Britain, was sentenced in his absence at a special war crimes tribunal in his home country.
Before the sentence was handed down, Mr Mueen-Uddin said on his website that although he opposed Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan at the time, he was not involved in any crimes.
He said he had “no confidence that I will receive a fair hearing in a tribunal already accused of judicial and procedural misconduct”.
Alongside New York-based Ashrafuzzaman Khan he was found guilty of abducting and murdering 18 people in December 1971, during the country’s fight for independence against Pakistan.
The dead included nine university teachers, six journalists and three physicians.
Senior judge Obaidul Hassan told the packed court in Dhaka: “Justice will not be done if they are not awarded capital punishment.”
Prosecutors accused the pair, who fled Bangladesh after it gained independence from Pakistan, of being “high command” members of the notorious Al Badr militia that supported Pakistani forces during the war.
Tribunal-appointed lawyers for them denied the charges against them. No defence witnesses were called during the trial held earlier this year.”
Mueen-Uddin has hardly kept a low profile since coming to the UK.
Sky News added:
“Mueen-Uddin, who came to the UK in 1973, has held positions in a host of top Islamic organisations, among them the Muslim Council of Britain – the country’s largest umbrella group representing Muslims.
The Home Office was unable to confirm if an extradition request had been made for Mr Mueen-Uddin who holds dual UK and Bangladesh citizenship.
A spokesman said: “As a matter of long standing policy and practice the UK will neither confirm nor deny whether an extradition request has been made or received until such time as a person is arrested in relation to that request.”
It is, however, convention that the UK does not extradite to countries that have the death penalty.”
Surely Britain could make an exception for Mueen-Uddin? I wouldn’t have many moral qualms about war criminals being put to death, after all Britain and the other Allies did the same after the Nurenburg Trials. Britain should not be considered as a haven for Islamic butchers and war criminals.
The infiltration of Mueen-Uddin into British society is much worse than that described by Sky News. Not only was he one of the founders of the Muslim Council of Britain, a group that for several years boycotted public commemorations of the Holocaust, on the grounds that the events were ‘too exclusive’, and is connected to the extremist East London Mosque, but that he also had a considerable influence on NHS Islamic chaplaincy services. Only in Britain would someone of his ilk rise to a position where he could advance his Islamist ideology. It is shameful that he has been able to do so.
The presence of Mueen-Uddin and those like him, are a stain on this nation. Previously the Harry’s Place blog said on the subject of Mueen-Uddin:
“ In 1971, Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin abducted, tortured and murdered a number of Bangladeshi intellectuals and patriots, who were seeking self-determination and independence for Bangladesh. As readers of Harry’s Place will be aware, following the failure of his campaign and Bangladesh’s independent. Mueen-Uddin then fled to Britain. Here. he established himself as a pillar of the Bangladeshi British Muslim establishment, the prime mover it its Jamaat-e-Islami directed Islamist politics, and – most shockingly – as the director of Muslim Spiritual Care Provision in the NHS and is also a chairman of the Multi-Faith Group for Healthcare Chaplaincy.
How did he manage it?
First of all, almost nobody challenged him: certainly not from within the National Health Service. After all, the men and women Mueen-Uddin murdered were just brown Muslims from a far away place. Secondly, Mueen Uddin employed the services of Carter Ruck, the solicitors who make a speciality of helping foreign mass murderers from keeping their guilty secrets under wraps through the use of this country’s extreme libel law, aided by the cost that any trial involving flying witnesses over from Bangladesh would inevitably cost.”
Talk about ‘hiding in plain sight’. Although Mueen-Uddin has not surprisingly denied being a war criminal, what should worry us all is that not only could someone like him gain access to the UK but he has been assisted by the great and the good and allowed to rise to a position of authority in Britain’s NHS. Do we really want bestial murderers and war criminals to have power in our state apparatus? How many other ‘Mueen-Uddin’s’ are out there, lurking in Britain’s public services. This is something that the public urgently need to be informed about. Would you want your chiropodist or GP to have a past that involved decapitating Hindus or ethnically cleansing Christians or Buddhists during the Bangladesh civil war? I certainly would not.
Links
Original Sky news article
http://news.sky.com/story/1163212/bangladesh-death-sentence-for-uk-muslim-leader
From the Bangladesh Daily Star
http://www.thedailystar.net/beta2/news/gallows-for-mueen-ashraf/
Harry’s Place article
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