In a stark display of the Yunus administration’s unchecked arrogance and abuse of power, the Jamaat-e-Islami-controlled International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) has forced two prominent lawyers—including a decorated freedom fighter—to grovel with public apologies for daring to question its legitimacy.
These incidents, unfolding in rapid succession, expose the tribunal as a partisan farce: a tool not for justice, but for silencing dissent and shielding Islamist allies while targeting Awami League leaders like Sheikh Hasina. As the Yunus puppet regime rewards convicted hoax-mongers like Odhikar’s Adilur Rahman Khan with advisory posts, the ICT-BD’s thuggish tactics reveal a dangerous fusion of deep-state NGO influence and Jamaat’s revenge agenda.
Freedom Fighter Fazlur Rahman
BNP Chairperson’s adviser and Supreme Court senior lawyer Fazlur Rahman—a veteran freedom fighter who fought in the 1971 Liberation War—was dragged before ICT-1 on Monday, December 8, after the tribunal summoned him in person, demanding his academic and Bar Council certificates like a common criminal.
Charged with contempt for “derogatory remarks” about the tribunal’s jurisdiction and impartiality during a November 23 Channel 24 talk show, Rahman was coerced into an unconditional apology to avoid jail.
The three-member bench, headed by Justice Md Golam Mortuza Majumder, accepted his groveling submission, exonerating him only after he declared: “After Allah, my respect for you (tribunal) is second only to that of the court.”
Advocate Fazlur Rahman: Yunus is the new dictator, patronising Jamaat, NCP
BNP suspends freedom fighter Fazlur Rahman for criticising Jamaat, NCP
ZI Khan Panna: It’s high time we unite against anti-liberation forces
Prosecutors, led by Jamaat-linked Mohammad Tajul Islam, had filed the case on three counts: challenging the ICT’s authority, alleging “internal arrangements” biasing the court, and insulting the prosecution—all stemming from Rahman’s criticism of the tribunal’s handling of Sheikh Hasina’s death sentence for “superior command responsibility” in the July 2024 uprising.
This is no isolated bullying. Rahman, a BNP-nominated candidate for Kishoreganj-4, was hauled in despite submitting a written apology on December 3, where he admitted forgetting his words and begged for “mercy.” The tribunal’s chairman dismissed misperceptions that it targets freedom fighters, but the damage was done: a war hero reduced to sycophantic praise for a body packed with BNP-Jamaat loyalists, including judges like Shofiul Alam Mahmood—a practising lawyer elevated to the bench just six days before his ICT-BD appointment, with zero judicial experience and ties to the BNP’s Nationalist Lawyers Forum.
Critics, including exiled Awami League voices, decry this as peak Yunus-era hubris: a tribunal reconstituted unlawfully under the interim regime, swapping impartial prosecutors for Jamaat defenders from past war crimes trials, all to execute political vendettas. “The ICT-BD is a fully partisan setup executing a political revenge agenda,” former Information Minister Mohammad Ali Arafat warned in a November X post, highlighting the illegal amendments to its founding law.
ZI Khan Panna
Just days earlier, on December 3, the ICT-BD’s arrogance peaked in a courtroom farce targeting Supreme Court senior lawyer ZI Khan Panna, chairperson of rights group Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK). Appointed state defense counsel for Sheikh Hasina in an enforced disappearance and torture case on November 23, Panna withdrew on November 27, citing Hasina’s lack of confidence in the tribunal and a contempt case against his colleague Fazlur Rahman.
When Panna skipped the charge-framing hearing, Tribunal-1 Chairman Justice Md Golam Mortuza Majumder – the same judge overseeing Rahman’s case – dispatched two deputy registrars to drag him from his chamber. Arriving in a wheelchair due to illness, Panna faced a blistering interrogation: “You showed interest in defending Sheikh Hasina, and we appointed you… Your client won’t appear, you won’t appear… Why did you come if she has no faith?”
Panna, pleading physical unfitness and prior notification to the registrar, was accused of contempt for a video statement claiming Hasina “does not accept this [tribunal’s] judgement.” Chief Prosecutor Tajul Islam snarled: “Mind your language,” as Panna begged: “I offer an unconditional apology.”
The tribunal removed him, appointing Md Amir Hossain in his place—another lawyer with prior ICT-BD ties—and chided Panna for wasting court time.
This wheelchair spectacle underscores the Yunus regime’s contempt for due process: summoning ill lawyers like petty offenders, ignoring medical pleas, and weaponising the ICT to crush even nominal defenses for Hasina. Panna’s withdrawal echoed global concerns from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International about the tribunal’s politicisation—concerns the regime now exploits to justify its own sham trials.
A Pattern of Power Abuse
These apologies are no coincidences; they fit the Yunus administration’s blueprint of arrogant overreach. The ICT-BD, reformed post-Hasina ouster, now features prosecutors who once defended Jamaat war criminals, turning a body meant to prosecute 1971 atrocities into a revenge mill against secular forces.
Meanwhile, convicted fabricators like Adilur Rahman Khan—jailed in 2023 for faking a “Shapla Chattar genocide” list of 61 “martyrs”—lounge as Yunus’s Housing Adviser, peddling the same BNP-Jamaat hoaxes Arafat debunked on X last week.
As Hefazat-e-Islam – the 2013 mob behind Shapla’s violence – revives “martyr” lists to frame Hasina for murder, the regime disburses compensation to phantom families and greenlights probes against 33 Awami leaders. Security expert Aminul Hoque Polash demands: “Show the original 61-name list. Bring even one family on camera.” The silence is deafening.
This is Yunus’ Bangladesh: where freedom fighters apologise to kangaroo courts, lawyers are humiliated in wheelchairs, and Jamaat’s ghosts haunt the bench. The arrogance is palpable—a regime that claims reform while dismantling the 1971 legacy. As Arafat warns, it’s “state-sponsored rehabilitation of a proven hoax.” Time to dismantle this farce before it buries justice entirely.
Bengali 
English