American journalist Lawrence Lifschultz has said that the connection between the BNP founder Ziaur Rahman and the United States behind the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman needs to be investigated ‘further’.
He gave reference to the secret meeting of Ziaur Rahman, the then deputy chief of army, with the CIA station chief in Dhaka, before the fateful night of August 15 in 1975, at a virtual discussion.
Lifschultz was the South Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review when the assassination of Bangabandhu’s family took place. He came to Dhaka from New Delhi to investigate the coup.
He said the majors who were in the front were the ‘trigger men’, but “the men who were behind they (assassination) would not have moved without Ziaur Rahman’s backing and would Ziaur Rahman have moved without American backing....in my view that needs to be further investigated.”
On accountability and injustice, Lifschultz said this is not only a Bangladesh question, but for me, it’s also an American question.
He recounted his investigation at the Awami League’s research wing Centre for Research and Information (CRI) organised discussion – “Bangladesh 1975 Setting the Clock Back” on Thursday night.
Salil Tripathi, historian and visiting scholar at New York University, also joined him with other Bangladeshi researchers and journalists at the discussion.
Lifschultz also termed Zia a ‘psychopath’ for the way he was using his capability and betraying others after taking over the power as a military ruler.
He said Zia also had meetings with the killers Colonel Rashid and Colonel Faruk who were planning the coup and it was Zia’s job to make sure the army did not intervene against them after the assassination.
The assassination of Bangabandhu, the first President of Bangladesh, was unique and strategically plotted. It was the first coup assassination in South Asia. In the era of the Cold War, other progressive secular post-colonial leaders also met the same fate.
Unlike other assassinations, Bangabandhu was murdered in a heinous fashion along with his family and kin. Justice process was blocked with the adoption of indemnity ordinance. It was a planned shockwave of horror in a newly independent country which ensured an ideological tiling towards conservative nationhood and a tune-back to colonial-style economy.
Lifschultz said he had some acquaintance for his work in Bangladesh in 1971 and came back to Dhaka for investigating after the assassination.
He said initially he did not believe that the United States was behind the coup because at that time the CIA was under investigation for its involvement in coups and history of other interventions that promoted the Frank Church led Church Committee’s recommendation for serious reforms of the agency.
“So it seemed to me in August 1975, in light of the Church Committee report and other investigations of the congress, this (US involvement) was highly unlikely,” he said.
“However, in mid-November in 1975 when I came in and I met a Bangladeshi acquaintance who I know, I never identified the person, and he sat me down and said he was not particularly friendly to Sheikh Mujib and there has been tension between Sheikh Mujib and himself.
“But he was disturbed that what had happened in the coup and the extent of murder and deaths.
He said to me ‘put the word conspiracy aside. Coups were planned’.
The fact that Khandaker Mushtaq had come forward, he said, ‘to me you have to understand what was going on in Calcutta in 1971’.
“He then was the first person to disclose to me that in 1971 contacts - Henry Kissinger had sent a special envoy George Griffin to Calcutta and that Griffin had been meeting with Mahbubul Alam Chashi, Taheruddin Thakur and Mushtaq on a back channel plan unknown to the provincial government of Tajuddin and others.”
He said the idea of Mushtaq group that Mushtaq would travel to New York in October 1971 and the UN would announce an agreement broker by the United States that independence would not be pursued and East Pakistan would accept autonomy and Mujib would be released.
“Anyone knows the dynamic and environment of the liberation war such a plan particularly when it was not discussed with the provincial government it was considered by Tajuddin and others essentially treason and Mushtaq was put under house arrest.”
Later those two – Chashi and Thakur - flanked Mushtaq on either side when they went on television announcing that Mushtaq had taken over the civilian base over this military operation.
“That was the first I would call a milestone of sort of doubting myself and doubting this skepticism I had begun with,” Lifschultz said.
He later came to full realization that Ziaur Rahman was holding things together.
He said the dinner at a businessman’s house was planned precisely for the meeting between the CIA station chief and Zia because months before the August 15, the then American ambassador in Dhaka Davis Boster had given instructions that all the embassy staff would have no contact with anyone planning and thinking about the coup.
He said the consolidation of power in the hands of Ziaur Rahman was increasingly violent and particularly the event of October 1977 when he killed thousands of soldiers and officers who were saying that Zia was involved in August 15 and also that he was moving in directions that indicated that possibly (Zia maintains) strong connections with Pakistan and others during the uprising that took place.
“We (Bangladesh) moved into a real military dictatorship which was even more violent than Pakistan,” he said.
“In my view, psychologically Ziaur Rahman was also something of a psychopath in his capability to use and betray others and use violence.”
Salil recounted his experience of interviewing self-confessed killer Colonel Faruk when he came to Bangladesh for the first time in 1986 as a young reporter.
In 1986, I had just finished my graduate studies in the US and I was back in India and came to Bangladesh essentially to figure out what was going on and what went wrong that was my question that why a country which started the trajectory of democracy, secularism and liberalism ended up having essentially one party state leading to the assassination of Sheikh Mujib, jail killing, coups and counter coups
But he said when he came to Dhaka he found it something that ‘only a fiction writer could dream of’ that the man (Colonel Faruk) who was an assassin confessed to leading the conspiracy and declared himself as a presidential candidate in the election.
“So I was curious about the man and when I approached him when I was in Dhaka and he very readily agreed to meet me. Well guarded house in a nice part of the city and guarded by security forces and so on and wearing a Pathani outfit which is not traditionally associated with folks of the east side of the country that itself was revealing. He told me he was in Libya. He was incredibly confident,” Salil said.
“I was a rookie reporter at the age of 2425. The impression I had was obviously he has a support of somebody important, because he cannot be doing what he can with this kind of impunity and immunity that he seems to enjoy unless someone is backing him.
“And the other thing that struck me about that conversation I can remember vividly was the pitilessness of his tone,” he said as he asked him about how Sheikh Russel was killed.
‘Was it necessary’ - was his question to Colonel Faruk as Russsel was only a 10 years old kid.
“He too had to go” – Faruk replied to him.
Salil asked why “There would have been a dynasty and it would go on and on,” he replied. “We had to put an end. And we had to do everything to save Bangladesh because we know we are the real freedom fighters and our freedom was taken away. It was becoming a muscle of India.”
In the webinar, Salil did not call them freedom fighters, rather he called them people who ‘saw themselves as freedom fighters’ and said he could understand the complexity of politics with the fact that there are people who ‘saw themselves as freedom fighters’ and they felt these are the politicians who sat in Calcutta and did nothing and we fought the war.
“This was the kind of way he was presenting himself that time. That intrigues me a lot,” Salil said about his interview.
Somebody commits a heinous crime and here it was rewarded, he said, referring to the indemnity ordinance which he said was ‘wrong’.
“Any crimes against humanity need justice. Need some sort of legal remedy. Anything indemnifying violence of this nature simply has no place ideally in any society.”
The indemnity ordinance was cancelled after 21 years of the brutal murder when Awami League came back to power in 1996.
Twelve killers are also brought to justice with five of them still absconding in different countries.