DHAKA (AFP) — A group of Bangladeshi war veterans and intellectuals has published a list of alleged war criminals from the country's 1971 independence struggle with Pakistan, an official said Friday.
The publication of the list of nearly 1,600 names comes amid growing calls for prosecutions, or at the least the setting up of a post-apartheid South African-style truth commission.
Those named include Yahya Khan, president of Pakistan during the war, General Tikka Khan, under whose command Pakistan launched the brutal military crackdown to crush the liberation movement, and Lieutenant General Ameer Abdullah Khan Niazi, who signed the surrender in December 1971.
Bangladeshis listed include the head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party Matiur Rahman Nizami, a minister in a coalition government until October 2006, and other party members.
The party on Friday rejected the allegations. "Only the country's highest court can declare anyone as (a) war criminal. No individual, agency or organisation has any such right," said spokesman Tasnim Alam in a statement.
The group that published the list, however, said around half of those listed were still alive and many were members of Jamaat.
"Out of the 1,597 people on the list, 369 were Pakistani army personnel. The rest were Bangladeshi collaborators," said M.A. Hasan of the War Crimes Fact Finding Committee, which has spent nearly two decades documenting war-time incidents including rape, arson and mass murder.
"We have been investigating for 17 years to compile the information. The list is on the basis of field-level investigation, mass graves and eyewitness statements," he added.
Earlier this year Amnesty International asked Bangladesh's military-backed government to establish a truth commission to probe war crimes.
The bloody nine-month conflict ended with Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan, emerging as an independent nation in 1971.
A court in the capital Dhaka has also ordered police to submit a report on allegations against Jamaat leader Nizami.
In a case filed by a former Bangladesh freedom fighter, he is accused along with 12 others of helping the Pakistan army plan a mass killing in which thousands of villagers died.
Jamaat-e-Islami has dismissed the charge as an attempt to "defame" the party.
Since the country's emergency government came to power in January 2007, war veterans have led calls for prosecutions.
"We will give this list to the government and the election commission," said Hasan. "Our demand to the government is that those perpetrators should be punished and disqualified from the next election."
The government has pledged to reinstate democracy by late 2008 after completing a clean-up of Bangladesh's notoriously corrupt politics.
Some Bangladeshis supported Islamabad during the war in order to prevent the break-up of Pakistan, which was established as a Muslim homeland on the subcontinent during the push for Indian independence in 1947.
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