Dhaka, May 10 (PTI): A personal photographer of Bangladesh’s former premier Khaleda Zia has been sentenced to life imprisonment along with 26 others for their role in murder of a youth during a violent protest in 1990.
Nuruddin Ahmed was among 27 people convicted by a fast- track tribunal court here yesterday, a prosecution lawyer said.
Ahmed’s lawyers, however, said he was a victim of “political vengeance” and they plan to challenge the verdict in a higher court.
All the accused were members of the outlawed extreme right-wing Freedom Party. Ahmed at that time was a photographer of now defunct daily Millat, a mouthpiece of the Freedom Party, floated by a group of sacked military officers who had staged the coup on August 15, 1975.
Ahmed was covering the demonstration of the Freedom Party when the incident occured. A few gunshots were fired at the event and one of them hit a passer-by who was killed.
Ahmed was among those arrested and charged over the murder.
Judge Mamtaz Begum handed down the verdict after a protracted trial process.
Prosecutors said Ahmed, also the elder brother of Zia’s political secretary Mosaddek Ali Falu, was closely associated with the kingpins of the Freedom Party and later became Zia’s personal photographer.
Several members of the Freedom party were convicted and hanged over the 1975 assassination of Bangladesh’s founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, also the father of current leader Sheikh Hasina.
They said Freedom Party stalwart Bazlul Huda was the prime accused in this murder case but the charge against him was dropped as he was executed in Rahman’s murder trial along with several other ex-army officers.
