Bangladesh assassin will stay in Canada, says MLA

Noor Chowdhury. (South China Morning Post)

A Canadian MLA has dismissed the possible extradition of Noor Chowdhury, a convicted fugitive killer of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, under Canadian law to face execution in Bangladesh, reports the Daily Star.

Rahman is considered the patriarch of Bangladesh for his central role in the country’s birth.

Chowdhury, a former Bangladeshi military officer, was convicted in absentia in the August 1975 killing of Rahman, who went on to become Bangladesh’s first president.

“Canadian law is very clear and it cannot extradite people to a country to face the death penalty,” Michael Prue reportedly told a meeting at Jatiya Press Club in Dhaka recently, citing Article 12 of Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which says: “Everyone has the right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.”

The Daily Star said Prue, from Beaches-East York constituency in Toronto, was in Bangladesh on a private visit on the way to Colombo, Sri Lanka, to attend a conference there. Prue said Canada refused similar extradition requests from countries like the U.S., China and South Africa.

Chowdhury was sentenced to death by firing squad on Nov. 8, 1998 along with 14 other alleged plotters of the assassination and coup. Chowdhury, in fact, was accused of personally killing Rahman with a sub-machine gun, Canadian court records show.

According to allegations contained in Federal Court documents, Chowdhury and a group of army officers carried out the killings on Aug. 15 after planning the attack in May.

On the morning of the killings, the plotters packed into a truck and headed for the presidential residence, according to an Interpol summary of the allegations. When the shooting ended, Rahman, his wife, three sons — including a 10-year-old boy — two daughters-in-law, a brother and several security officers lay dead, the document states.

Chowdhury, however, has repeatedly denied the charges during his refugee hearings in Canada. He has claimed he was visiting the woman who later became his wife, helping her brother finish a rush order of T-shirts to be used in a rally supporting Rahman, court records show.

Chowdhury, 62, whose first name is sometimes spelled “Nur,” served as a Bangladeshi diplomat in the years following the 1975 overthrow of the Rahman regime. He fled Bangladesh for Canada in 1996.

Though thwarted in his efforts to gain refugee status in Canada and facing a deportation order, Chowdhury has avoided expulsion from this country for nearly a decade because of Canada’s legal obligation — the result of a 2001 Supreme Court ruling — not to deport or extradite suspected criminals who may face execution in another country, except in the most “exceptional” circumstances.

Chowdhury — who reportedly lives a quiet life in an Etobicoke condominium — attended his first refugee hearing in Canada in 1999, and has faced a string of defeats beginning in 2002, when his application was initially denied, court records show.

He was again denied in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

– with Postmedia News

Tags: Michael Prue, Noor Chowdhury, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman