DHAKA, 3 September 2004 — The US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Interpol agents have begun investigation into a grenade attack on an opposition party rally that killed 20 people, officials said yesterday.
Two agents from each organization are working with police and other authorities probing the Aug. 21 assault which the opposition Awami League says was an assassination attempt against party leader Hasina Wajed.
“The FBI is here at the invitation of the authorities and with the full knowledge of the government,” a US Embassy spokesman in Dhaka told AFP. The two grenade experts from Interpol would follow up a preliminary report by two colleagues from the international police liaison body, the official news agency BSS said.
The Bangladeshi government, which has appointed a senior High Court judge to carry out a judicial inquiry into the blasts, accepted an offer of assistance from Interpol last week. But Awami League chief Hasina Wajed , who survived the assassination attempt, has refused to testify before the one-man judicial commission headed by the High Court judge.
According to BSS, she also refused to hand over to the commission her bullet-proof Mercedes jeep which her political secretary Saber Hossian Chowdhury said was fired upon while she was returning to her Sudha Sadan residence after the incident.
The commission sources said in Dhaka yesterday that the judicial inquiry commission had sent an official to Hasina’s private secretary on Aug. 29 with a letter requesting her to testify before the Commission according to her convenience at her residence. She was also requested to present the jeep for inspection by the commission.
The sources said the official, who had gone there with prior appointment, waited for two hours for delivering the letter, but no body received it.
The Awami League, however, has already dismissed the initiative and demanded an “independent international” investigation on all recent blasts in Bangladesh. No one has accepted blame for a series of explosions this year in the northeastern city of Sylhet that killed seven people.
A little-known group, Hikmatul Jihad, claimed responsibility for the grenade assault in Dhaka and confirmed opposition claims it had been an attempt on Hasina’s life.
