NEW YORK, Feb. 28, 2015
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speakers at a seminar in New York urged upon the Bangladesh government to bring the real
culprits behind the massacre of 57 army officials in
February 25, 2009 at BDR headquarters
in Dhaka to justice. They also
demanded for announcement of February
25 as a `National Day'.
The demand was made at the seminar organized by Human Rights
Development for Bangladesh (HRDB)
held at the Jewish Center in Jackson
Heights, New York on February
28 commemorating the mass killing of the army officials in a
mutiny by the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), now the Border Guards
Bangladesh (BGB).
With HRDB president Mahtab Uddin
Ahmed in the chair the seminar was addressed, among others,
by Sadek Hossain Khoka, a former
Bangladesh minster and also the
ex-mayor of Dhaka City,
Salahuddin Ahmed, former wing
commander of Bangladesh Air Force, Professor Dr. Abid Bahar, teacher at Dowson College in
Montreal and Professor
Shamsul Arefin. It was moderated by
Mahbubur Rahman, general secretary
of HRDB.
Expressing their discontent over the process of trial of the
people responsible for the killings, the speakers said, we are yet
to know who masterminded the heinous killings. How many more years
do we have to wait to see the killers of the Pilkhana carnage
punished due to the lengthy nature of the judicial proceedings? Six
years after the gruesome incident, families of the 2009 carnage
victims are now complaining that in this process the real culprits
may evade justice.
Mentionable, on February 25 in
2009, some soldiers of the BDR mutinied at their Pilkhana
headquarters, broke into the armory, looted arms and then went on a
killing spree for 33 hours. Seventy-four people, including 57 army
officers, were massacred. The mutineers also looted their officers'
houses, violated women and children and took them hostage.
The special court awarded death penalty to 152 people and
different terms of imprisonment to 423 people in the carnage case.
Almost all of them were BDR soldiers.
The speakers further said, our pain will heal only when the
killers will be executed. We want the real mastermind behind the
killings to face justice.
Contact: Nakib Rahman
humanrightbd@gmail.com
347-414-6658
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SOURCE Human Rights and Development for Bangladesh