This picture shows how high the war criminal Mueen-Uddin managed to climb among the British Establishment.
Sky News has an interesting article about how Choudhury Mueen-Uddin, the convicted war criminal from the Bangladesh civil war, who is squirming and issuing denials that he took part in any atrocities. Well he do that wouldn’t he?
The article said:
“Just days after being handed a death sentence for war crimes in Bangladesh, a Muslim community leader living in Britain has told Sky News he is a victim of an unlawful tribunal targeting innocent people.
Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, who lives in London, was found guilty of carrying out the abduction and execution of 18 intellectuals – nine university teachers, six journalists, and three physicians – during the 1971 war of independence in Bangladesh.
On Sunday, the Bangladeshi government sentenced him in his absence for the killings in December 1971.
Mr Mueen-Uddin told Sky News the war crimes tribunal has been targeting him and others who did nothing wrong.
“It is not only me,” he said, speaking from his lawyers’ offices in London. “They are targeting innocent people. The respected religious scholar of the country is facing death sentence in this farcical tribunal.”
This really is a case of ‘he would say that wouldn’t he?’ It really does look like a list of seriously piss-poor excuses for war crimes doesn’t it? ‘I didn’t do it’, ‘it was others’ and ‘the court is hounding the innocents,’ about the only hackneyed phrase not present was ‘only following orders’.
Sky News added:
“Mr Mueen-Uddin fled his home country of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) at the end of the war of independence which saw it split from Pakistan.
He said he was an outspoken campaigner for the unification of Pakistan but was only involved in a peaceful, political way.
When asked if he was guilty of the crimes, he said: “Not at all. In fact I was not a member of any paramilitary or militia organisations. I was a supporter of the unity of Pakistan – that is of course clear. But that was political support only.”
So who out there believes his denials? I don’t. A brief look at some of the less than pleasant entities that he has been involved with in the UK, such as the East London Mosque, should give anyone a serious clue about his affinity for extremist views of Islam. The East London Mosque is virtually controlled by Jamaat e Islaami a South Asian Islamic clerical fascist organisation.
The Sky article continued:
“He is credited with setting up the Muslim Council of Britain and hosted the Prince of Wales at the Islamic Foundation in 2003.
As well as Mr Mueen-Uddin and his legal team, others have called into question the judicial process of the war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh, which has been ongoing since 2010.
Liberal Democrat Lord Alex Carlile has written a letter to Foreign Secretary William Hague outlining his concerns about the legal process.
He describes Mr Mueen-Uddin’s trial as “grossly improper”, saying that “there is other evidence that the Bangladeshis are circumventing fair trail procedures … over 150 soldiers were sentenced to death this week for offences which were not tried in a fair way”.
Although he is ‘credited’ with setting up the Muslim Council of Britain, that shouldn’t really be anything to be proud of. The MCB is not a ‘clean hands’ entity. It was the organisation that for several years boycotted the National Holocaust Memorial day because it was too ‘exclusive’ and focussed on the Jewish victims of the Holocaust (which in reality it is not). Basically one bone of contention was that the organisers of Holocaust Memorial Day refused to allow MCB and other similar organisations to sully this memorial day with false political statements about Islamic ‘victimhood’.
For this, and other even darker reasons, such as MCB members signing the Istanbul Declaration, and MCB associated individuals issuing threats against British troops, the last Government belatedly banned official contact between Government agencies and the MCB.
Later the Labour Government relented, and allowed MCB back into the fold and continued governmental contacts with it. MCB has been described by its friends as being an ally in the fight against extremism but as the Spectator magazine said back in 2010, MCB is part of the problems with extremism and not the solution to it.
It will also be noticeable that it is a member of the skankiest, slimiest, most untrustworthy political party in Britain, the Lib Dems, who is supporting Mueen-Uddin over this issue. Nobody should be surprised either at the Lib Dems lack of moral fibre in condemning war crimes in Bangladesh, nor at the sight of a senior Lib Dem acting on behalf of Mueen-Uddin, a now convicted war criminal.
It appears that the people of Bangladesh, who suffered terribly during the civil war do not take the same view as Lord Carlile. Sky News said:
“The view in Bangladesh amongst the press and majority of the public is that Mr Mueen-Uddin has been given a just sentence. Cheers rang out around the courthouse when the verdict was delivered.
Bangladesh-based journalist David Bergman, who has reported on the war crimes case for more than 10 years, said the tribunal has been frontpage news in the country.
He said that Mr Mueen-Uddin “is criticising this particular tribunal and he may well have legitimate reasons for that, but I don’t think that takes away from the fact that there is substantial, significant evidence in the form of affidavits, eye witness testimony and other evidence”.
It certainly looks as if Mueen-Uddin is ‘bang to rights’ on the charges which he had been accused of. The fact that there appears to be a considerable amount of evidence of Mueen-Uddin’s guilt and the fact that he is ‘arse-covering’ by saying that he was only involved in ‘political matters’, really does call into question the correctness of Lord Carlile’s judgement in getting involved in this case. It is not as if this case has dropped out of the sky, this Mueen-Uddin’s views, connections and what he was accused of, has been known for a while.
Some of Mueen-Uddin’s excuses are just laughable.
“Mr Mueen-Uddin says he is innocent and has no idea how his name has kept coming up over the decades.
“It is a mystery to me … not only was I not involved in any military actions, I was also very critical of the atrocities at the time.”
I love the way he says that he has no idea why people call him a war criminal, the answer is because he probably is.
“The tribunal has now convicted 10 people, mostly leaders of the country’s largest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, for war crimes, with seven of them sentenced to death by hanging. At least another eight are on trial.
The trials have sparked protests throughout the Muslim-majority country, leaving at least 150 people dead since January when the court started handing down their verdicts.
Jamaat-e-Islami claims the trials are politically motivated and accuses the secular government of trying to execute its entire leadership.”
To be quite frank, although I believe people should be free to hold whatever peaceful political views they choose, hitting at an organisation like Jamaat which has a long history of promoting violent Islamism, and who have also helped to import such extremism into London’s East End, is more than justified. The world would be a lot better off without Islamo-nazis like Jamaat.
“Neither the Home Office, nor Bangladesh authorities would say whether extradition requests have exchanged hands.
It is, however, convention that the UK does not extradite to countries that have the death penalty.”
Now there is a great and terrible shame. Here is a man who deserves to end his life on the end of a rope, after a trial that showed the depths of his criminality, but it is illegal for Britain to send him to face the sort of justice he not only richly deserves, but a justice and a hearing that he and the organisations he supported, denied to his victims.
Links
Original Sky News Article
http://news.sky.com/story/1165582/uk-muslim-chief-slams-his-war-crimes-sentence
Spectator on the problems with the Muslim Council of Britain
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/5719068/why-do-we-kowtow-to-the-mcb/
Previously on here about the war criminal Mueen-Uddin
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