Rakib Khan’s Blog

May 29, 2007 04:30 AM
Tim Harper
WASHINGTON BUREAU

SAN FRANCISCO–With his remaining time possibly measured in hours, friends and family of a former Bangladeshi diplomat and military officer are appealing to Ottawa to grant him asylum to save his life.
U.S. authorities are set to deport Mohiuddin Ahmed as early as Thursday, sending him back to Dhaka where he has been sentenced, in absentia, to death for his role in a 1975 coup.
He has steadfastly maintained his innocence, saying that as a military officer with the rank of major at the time, he was merely following orders to form a roadblock in front of the home of the president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was slain along with members of his family, including his wife and 10-year old son, in a dawn attack on his Dhaka villa by more than 100 soldiers.
The 1998 convictions of Ahmed and 14 other military officials were the work of a vengeful government and a sham, his family says.
They say Ahmed sought asylum in the United States rather than return to Bangladesh, a country where he believed he could not find justice.
Ahmed’s last chance to remain in the U.S. ended late last week when San Francisco’s 9th Circuit Court refused to hear his case again.
“I stand by him and I will stand with him until his last breath,” his weeping wife, Hena Mohiuddin, said in an interview here.
As she spoke, she was comforted by her daughter Sabrina and son Rouben. “I want Canada to do the right thing. Canada has a humanitarian history. Canada would know this is not right.”
Politicians on both sides of the border are rallying to Ahmed’s case.
Ahmed has two nieces in the Greater Toronto Area, but they fear retribution against family members in Bangladesh if they speak out.
Another niece, Jinat Jahan, of Dartmouth, N.S., has appealed to Canadian Immigration Minister Diane Finley and she and Ahmed’s daughter Sabrina will take their case to MPs in Ottawa today.
“I implore you to save this innocent man from an unjust sentence of death,” writes Jahan, who has been in Canada since 2004.
“I am asking you to urgently intervene and take such steps as are necessary to allow my uncle to come to Canada as a refugee.”
Because time is ticking on this case, Canadian legal sources say it could take the intervention of Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay or even the office of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to keep Ahmed from being sent to an execution.
“We expect him to be taken from the tarmac to the firing squad,” says his Los Angeles lawyer Joseph Sandoval.
This type of appeal has very fe