ACCUSED ASSASSIN IN LIMBO
BANGLADESH SEEKS ORDER FORCING CANADA TO DISCLOSE STATUS OF MAN AT THE CENTRE OF A BLOODY COUP
In August 1975, a group of soldiers stormed the residence of Bangladesh’s first president and brutally gunned down him and his family. It was the start of a military coup. Only two of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s daughters, both in West Germany at the time, survived.
One of those daughters was elected as Bangladesh’s leader two decades later and, ever since, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been on a mission to bring her father’s killers to justice. In 1998, 15 men were convicted in a trial; after lengthy appeals and three acquittals, five were executed in 2010. But the man thought to have personally fired the bullets that killed Hasina’s father was convicted in absentia, and has never faced punishment.
Instead, Nur Chowdhury has been living free in Canada since 1996, much to the outrage of Hasina. Now Bangladesh is pushing once again to have Chowdhury returned. A new Federal Court application was filed on June 7 that seeks to force the federal government to disclose Chowdhury’s current legal status, which is a mystery both to the public and to the Bangladesh government.
Although Chowdhury’s refugee claim was rejected by Canadian officials over his alleged role in the assassination, he has escaped deportation due to the death sentence handed down by the Bangla desh court. Following multiple Supreme Court decisions, Canada does not deport people likely to be executed or tortured. (There is a caveat for “exceptional circumstances,” though that remains vague in practice.)
Hasina reportedly raised the matter directly with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a meeting following the G7 Summit in Quebec, which Bangladesh was attending as one of 12 countries invited to an “outreach session.”
In a June 11 report in the Daily Star, the largest Englishlanguage newspaper in Bangladesh, Hasina’s press secretary said that during the meeting Hasina “called for Trudeau’s personal initiative for immediate extradition of the selfconfessed killer, one of the two assassins who directly shot Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman dead.”
(Chowdhury would likely dispute being “selfconfessed,” as he had tried to declare his innocence when applying for refugee status.)
The Daily Star’s account also reported Trudeau “expressed his compassion to Sheikh Hasina” and told her that “Canadian officials were quietly engaged in dealing with the issue.”
Trudeau’s office had released a public summary of the meeting on June 10, but it made no mention of Chowdhury’s case. The summary said the two leaders discussed “opportunities to improve the resilience of coastal communities and to reduce plastic waste,” as well as support for the Rohingya and others displaced by the Myanmar conflict.
Asked on Wednesday whether the leaders discussed Chowdhury’s case, Trudeau’s office said it had nothing to add to the public summary.
The court document, however, shows this has been an active file between the two governments.
“In September 2016, these issues were discussed in a meeting between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed ... As a result of that meeting, a further meeting of Canadian and Bangladesh officials was held in April 2017,” the application for judicial review reads.
It says Canadian officials had explained the limitation on deporting someone likely to face execution. But they had declined to give Bangladesh information on Chowdhury’s current immigration status, including whether he was ever granted a pre-removal risk assessment — a formal mechanism that exempts someone from being deported.
In January 2018, Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s High Commissioner to Canada, wrote to Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen requesting the status of Chowdhury’s risk assessment. Hussen denied the request on two grounds: that Chowdhury had a reasonable expectation of privacy, and that Canada and Bangladesh don’t have an information sharing agreement.
Rahman then requested that a special information sharing agreement be negotiated, but was again rebuffed on privacy grounds.
The Federal Court application, filed by Torys LLP in Toronto, seeks to have the court reject the minister’s decision as unreasonable, arguing Hussen did not fully consider the “significant” public interest grounds in releasing Chowdhury’s information.
“Chowdhury has been convicted of a crime of great significance for the people of Bangladesh ... The information sought is necessary to enable the Government of Bangladesh to assess its policy options and the basis of negotiations with the Government of Canada.”
Chowdhury’s case received significant media coverage in Canada in 2011, including articles in the National Post, Maclean’s and the Toronto Star. At the time, he was found to be living in a condo in the Toronto neighbourhood of Etobicoke with his wife, Rashida Khanam. But Chowdhury has avoided the spotlight since then. A message left on what appeared to be Chowdhury’s voice mail was not returned.
The Bangladesh High Commission did not respond to request for comment, while a spokesperson for Hussen said they can’t discuss any case without signed consent.
The court document says Bangladesh has been trying to resolve this with Canada for more than a decade.
“In those discussions, the Government of Bangladesh has emphasized the significance of the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman ... the worldwide effort on the part of the Government of Bangladesh to bring Chowdhury and the other fugitives from that assassination (and coup) to justice, and the importance of obtaining Canada’s co-operation to uphold the rule of law and avoid becoming a safe haven for people who have committed crimes abroad.”