Bangladesh high court acquits all accused, including ex-PM Khaleda Zia's son, in 2004 Hasina attack case

Dhaka: The High Court here on Sunday scrapped the lower court's verdict and acquitted all accused, including former Bangladesh prime minister Khaleda Zia’s son Tarique Rahman and former state minister Lutfozzaman Babar, in a 2004 grenade attack in ousted premier Sheikh Hasina's rally.

“The High Court annulled the trial court verdict and acquitted all convicts including Tarique Rahman," a spokesman for the attorney general’s office said.

Rahman, 57, is the acting chairman of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Two cases -- one for murder and another under the Explosives Act -- were filed after a grenade attack on an Awami League rally at Bangabandhu Avenue in Dhaka left 24 people dead and nearly 300 injured.

The HC bench of Justice AKM Asaduzzaman and Justice Syed Enayet Hossain acquitted all 49 accused and observed that the trial court's verdict in the cases was "illegal." The High Court's verdict comes after the bench heard the death references and appeals related to the cases filed over the attack.

The trial court had delivered the judgement based on a confession by Mufti Abdul Hannan, the top leader of the banned Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) militant outfit who was accused in the case.

Hannan has been executed in connection with another case.

The High Court said the confessional statement had no evidential value as it was taken on force and not examined properly by the magistrate concerned.

On November 21, the bench kept the death references (trial court documents for confirmation of death sentences) and the appeals filed by the convicted accused in the cases as curia advisari vult (meaning the verdict will be delivered any day) after it concluded a hearing on those matters.

During the hearing on the death references and appeals, the defence lawyers for the accused requested the High Court to scrap the trial court verdict as there was no specific allegation against them.

Meanwhile, appearing for the State, Deputy Attorney Generals Md Jashim Sarker and Md Russell Ahammad requested the High Court bench to uphold the lower court verdicts in the cases as the allegations against the convicted accused were proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Hasina, then opposition leader, narrowly escaped the attack on August 21, 2004, but 24 people were killed as several grenades were hurled when she was addressing a “rally against terrorism”.

A Dhaka court on October 10, 2018, sentenced 19 people, including Babar, to death in the two cases filed in connection with the attacks.

Nineteen others, including Rahman, now in London, were given life imprisonment and 11 were handed different terms in prison.

Analysts previously said the incident changed Bangladesh's politics forever. In contrast, the Business Standard newspaper at the time said that “it was a premeditated barbaric act designed to wipe out the whole leadership of Awami League, including Hasina”.

The FBI was called from the US to investigate the attack in which the assassins used grenades.

A former chief of Bangladesh’s spy agency DGFI testified as a witness later in the trial court and said the perpetrators were protected under directives of the higher authorities.

The High Court decision comes nearly four months after Hasina’s Awami League regime was ousted in a student-led mass upsurge and she fled to India on August 5.

Three days later Professor Muhammad Yunus took oath as the chief adviser of the interim government.