Masud Sayedee, MP for Pirojpur-1, has called Manik Poshari, the plaintiff in the case against Delawar Hossain Sayedee and one of the prosecution’s main witnesses, a “fake freedom fighter”. “There was no obstruction to his burial or funeral prayers,” he said. “People objected to a guard of honour being given to a fake freedom fighter, which is an insult to the honour of the state.”
He said this in a post on his verified Facebook account on Saturday.
“The notorious Manik Poshari, a protégé, beneficiary and collaborator of the fascist Awami League who gave controversial and false testimony against the martyr Allama Delawar Hossain Sayedee at the International Crimes Tribunal, died at some point today (Saturday) at a hospital in Gopalganj,” Masud Sayedee wrote. “After his death he was brought to Pirojpur, and an attempt was made to give him a guard of honour with state honours. When people learned of it, they objected to the so-called guard of honour and told the administration that the notorious Manik Poshari is not a freedom fighter.”
“But the administration said he is a ‘gazetted freedom fighter’. Even so, people objected to a guard of honour for a fake freedom fighter. We calmed people down and asked them to be patient. We made them understand that the wrongs the Awami League did in the past must never be done by us. I stayed in constant contact with the Barishal divisional commissioner, the DIG of the Barishal range and the Pirojpur administration. From my own position, and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami as a party, we made every effort together to keep the situation under control. Thank God, law and order stayed under control throughout, but controlling public anger was truly very hard.”
Sayedee’s son added: “We had and have nothing to say about, and put no obstacle to, the notorious Manik Poshari’s funeral prayers or burial. The objection was to a guard of honour for a fake freedom fighter. Even so, the administration secretly gave a guard of honour to a fake freedom fighter who got that status through lies and forgery.”
“I consider this an insult to the sacrifice of the country’s freedom fighters, an affront to our great independence and an extreme mockery of the country’s legal and state system,” he said. “A man who himself admitted under cross-examination at the International Crimes Tribunal that he was not a freedom fighter, such a cheat being given state honour as a real freedom fighter and allowed to draw a government allowance year after year, cannot be accepted in any way.”
On the fake freedom fighter status and the DO letter, the Jamaat MP said: “The biggest forgery is that when the tribunal lawyer asked Manik Poshari, ‘Are you a freedom fighter?’, he said plainly, ‘I did not fight in the war of liberation directly.’ I quote his statement to the tribunal here word for word: ‘I did not fight in the liberation war directly, but I helped. I helped the freedom fighters. For this the current MP, AKMA Awal, gave a DO letter in my name to have my name included in the list of freedom fighters. I do not remember whether he gave me that DO letter before or after I filed the case against Delawar Hossain Sayedee in Pirojpur.'”
Masud Sayedee said Manik Poshari had admitted openly here that he was not a freedom fighter, but that before he came forward as a witness in the case, Awal, then MP and, he said, a notorious Awami League collaborator, had given him a DO letter to make him a freedom fighter. In other words, he said, there was an attempt to make him a freedom fighter purely as a reward for false testimony.
In the post, the MP demanded an inquiry into how Manik Poshari became a gazetted freedom fighter and raised several questions. The title of freedom fighter is a country’s highest place of valour and honour, he said. Who made a notorious, self-declared non-freedom fighter and proven liar like Manik Poshari a gazetted freedom fighter? Which conspiring quarter let him draw a freedom fighter’s allowance for years from the state’s tax money?
Masud Sayedee said the officials, verification committees and politicians behind putting Manik Poshari on the list of freedom fighters and getting him an allowance illegally must be found at once, and exemplary legal action taken against them for embezzling state money and forgery.
“Strict and exemplary punishment must be arranged for former illegal MP AKMA Awal for certifying a fake person as a freedom fighter with a DO letter and abusing political power to put a name on the list of freedom fighters in exchange for false testimony,” he said.
The opposition MP demanded that Manik Poshari’s name be struck from the freedom fighters’ gazette quickly and that all state benefits and allowances given to him be stopped for good. Ending the post, Masud Sayedee wrote: “No evil force built on lies and forgery can cover up the truth forever. This forgery by Manik Poshari and his patrons has stained the spirit of our great liberation war. We strongly condemn it and demand that those involved be brought to justice quickly and given exemplary punishment.”
Source: Daily Jugantor
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report