FM for strengthening victim, witness protection regime

FE Team | Published: August 26, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali stressed Monday the need for strengthening victim and witness protection regime through identifying and addressing the gaps to ensure the full protection of witnesses to terrorism, reports UNB.
"We must leverage that synergy to further strengthen our victim and witness protection regime," he said adding that recent experience with combating financing of terrorism has shown what can be achieved through effective coordination among all agencies concerned.
The foreign minister was speaking at the inaugural session of a two-day national workshop on 'Strengthening National Legal Frameworks for the Protection and Support of Victims and Witnesses of Terrorism' at the CIRDAP international conference centre in the city.
Senior Home Secretary Dr M Mozammel Haque, Law Secretary M Shahidul Haque and US Ambassador Dan W Mozena, among others, spoke on the occasion.
Mahmood Ali cited the case of late Mostafa Howladar who was hacked to death while asleep at his home at a village in Pirojpur in December last year.
"It was a clear case of reprisal against Howladar for having testified against Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee. In less than two years of giving his testimony, Howladar had to succumb to the wrath of those who would like to see the ICT-BD trials disrupted and halted," he said.
The foreign minister said Howladar became the second generation victim of the murderous zeal of the purveyors of the crimes against humanity and genocide during our War of Liberation in 1971.
"We couldn't, as a society and a State, guarantee the protection that was due to Howladar despite the palpable threat against his life and many others like him," he said.
Speaking at the function, Mozena said Bangladesh knows the pain of terrorism as it felt the sting of terrorism as a well-coordinated bombing campaign struck 63 of the nation's 64 districts within a single day, as a barrage of grenades rained upon the then Leader of the Opposition and her supporters, slaughtering so many innocent people in 2004 and again in 2005.
"I applaud Bangladesh for its determination to save and preserve its hard-won freedom, to fight those who use fear, intimidation, killing to make Bangladesh a home for terrorism," he said adding that he gives high marks to the government of Bangladesh for its powerful actions to excise the cancer of terrorism from the nation.