Lawyers boycott Dhaka courts

Press, 7 August 1985, Page 10

Lawyers boycott Dhaka courts

NZPA-Reuter Dhaka Hundreds of lawyers boycotted courts in Dhaka yesterday to protest against bomb blasts that injured 25 people attending a murder trial. The blasts rocked Dhaka’s heavily guarded District Court, minutes after Judge Anisul Huq Chowdhury sentenced 13 people to life imprisonment for murdering an opposition leader, Moizuddin Ahmed, last September. The police said the injured included two lawyers, one policeman and a press photographer. Several people were detained for questioning. Ahmed, a former member of Parliament from the Awami League Party and vice-president of the Bangladesh Red Cross, was shot and stabbed to death at Kaliganj, about 30km from Dhaka, during an opposi-

tion-called strike. Shamsul Huq Chowdhury, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, said: “The Government has failed to protect the sanctity of the courts and lives of innocent people by not taking adequate measures against a vendetta.” Mr Chowdhury said at least five bombs were thrown in the courtroom, crowded with hundreds of people for the sentencing of Azam Khan and 12 accomplices. Eight were tried in absentia. Begum Khaleda Zia, head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, described the explosions as the “worst threat against the independence of the judiciary. “Rule of law, freedom of expression and fundamental rights have all been suspended by the military regime which is to be, at least partly, blamed for such incidents,” she said.