Dep Director of Islamic Foundation and also NHS boss faces death penalty over war crimes charges and torture - 18 murders in Bangladesh

Dep Director of Islamic Foundation and also NHS boss faces death penalty over war crimes charges and torture - 18 murders in Bangladesh.(DailyMail).

One of Britain's most important Muslim leaders – who has a senior role in the NHS – is to be charged with 18 murders by a war crimes tribunal in his native Bangladesh, investigators have told The Mail on Sunday. 

Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, who is director of Muslim Spiritual Care Provision in the NHS and is also a chairman of the Multi-Faith Group for Healthcare Chaplaincy, is accused of abducting, torturing and killing 18 journalists, academics and doctors during the bloody war of independence in Bangladesh in 1971.
Mr Mueen-Uddin, 63, who strongly denies the allegations, is believed to have fled Bangladesh shortly after the war ended, and has been living in London since the early Seventies. Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) – which has been set up to try the country's most notorious war criminals still alive – has announced that it has completed its year-long investigation into Mr Mueen-Uddin.
The ICT's prosecution wing will announce formal charges against him in the next few days, said a senior official at the tribunal. Sanaul Huq, the Inspector-General of Bangladesh's national police force, who is co-ordinating the ICT investigation, said his investigators believe that Mr Mueen-Uddin killed dozens of people during the independence war, but they can link him only to 18 murders with evidence and eyewitness testimonies.

The ICT said Mr Mueen-Uddin and his associates allegedly subjected their victims to horrendous torture before killing them and dumping their bodies in sports grounds which earned the nickname 'killing fields'. 

Mr Huq told The Mail on Sunday: 'They abducted an eye doctor, and then gouged his eyes out before killing him and dumping his body. 'They abducted a cardiologist and cut out his heart before killing him and dumping his body. 'They kidnapped a woman journalist, and cut her breasts off before killing her. Her decomposing body was later found with her breasts cut off.'
These victims were chosen because they were leading figures in the independence movement. Mueen-Uddin was a leading figure when it comes to killing activists. This is why we want to try him in court. 'As soon as charges are made – which I can guarantee will happen in days – we will request the British Government to hand him back to Bangladesh, and we will ask Interpol for his arrest. We will use all means, diplomatic and legal, to bring him back. If we fail, we will try him in absentia.' 

Mr Mueen-Uddin was one of the chief Islamic leaders who mobilised thousands of British Muslims to protest against the publication of Salman Rushdie's controversial book, The Satanic Verses, in 1989. He led a group of Muslim leaders who went to Downing Street to hand a petition against publication of the book to Margaret Thatcher, who was Prime Minister at the time.
Mr Mueen-Uddin has also met Prince Charles, including one occasion when the heir to the throne visited the East London Mosque in 2010. The ICT was set up by the Bangladeshi government two years ago after all major political parties voted unanimously in Parliament for a war crimes tribunal. Human rights groups and activists had been campaigning for the tribunal for decades. The ICT has so far arrested nine alleged war criminals and is trying them in special courts in front of a panel of three judges. The nine are some of the most prominent Islamist leaders of the country, who are accused of killing thousands of independence activists and leaders during the 1971 war. 
Mr Huq said: 'At the ICT we are not going to try the foot-soldiers, but are going after the main leaders. We have a list of 20 notorious alleged war criminals we want to try. Mueen-Uddin is one of them. He was a very big player.'
Investigators say that Mr Mueen-Uddin's official title in Al Badr was 'operation-in-charge', which made him a commander of the group. He is accused of personally abducting six journalists – including a local BBC reporter – three doctors and nine academics from Dhaka University between December 10 and 15, 1971. More than 1,000 Bangladeshi intellectuals and prominent supporters of the independence movement were killed in the dying days of the war by the Pakistani military in a calculated effort to deprive the new country of its leaders, says the ICT.
Mr Mueen-Uddin and his associates allegedly abducted their victims from their houses during the night at gunpoint, and took them to a gym called the Mohammedpur Training Centre in Mirpur, an area in north Dhaka. The gym was said to have been converted into a makeshift torture chamber.After the victims were tortured and killed, their bodies were dumped in nearby grounds. The bodies of some victims were never found.Read the full story here.More here.