Jamaat chief blasts Bangladesh President, reveals Yunus-Islamists nexus

Days after Bangladesh President, Mohammed Shahabuddin, revealed how the interim regime of Muhammad Yunus treated him after the ouster of PM Sheikh Hasina, the Ameer of the Islamist party, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, Shafiqur Rahman launched a big attack on the former. In doing so, Jamaat's Rahman, inadvertently laid bare the nexus between Islamist groups in Bangladesh and Yunus's interim regime.

Writing on Facebook on Tuesday, Shafiqur Rahman, who is now the Leader of the Opposition, asked as to how Shahabuddin suppressed many facts regarding the events of August 5, 2024, the day Hasina left the country. On that day, the Awami League government of Hasina, facing deadly protests which were hijacked by Islamists, was forced out of power.

In an interview with Bangla newspaper Kaler Kontho, Shahabuddin had ripped apart the Yunus regime, terming its rule and many of its actions as unconstitutional. Shahabuddin had revealed that the Yunus administration put him under virtual house arrest, tried to unseat him from the Presidency several times and prevented him from flying out of Bangladesh for medical treatment.

Shahabuddin, who became the President of Bangladesh in April 2023, was an appointee of the Hasina-led Awami League government.

JAMAAT CHIEF SHAFIQUR RAHMAN CRITIQUES PRESIDENT SHAHABUDDIN

While Shahbuddin criticised Yunus and his regime during the interview, it did not stop Jamaat supremo, Shafiqur Rahman, from hitting back at the the President.

"The President has suppressed many things regarding August 5, 2024. He did not acknowledge in his current statement what he told the leaders present regarding the resignation of the fallen and fugitive Prime Minister and what he later told the nation. And he did not say anything that day that he is saying now," Rahman wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

Shafiqur was referring to the controversy over Sheikh Hasina's missing resignation letter, a document which was constitutionally required to legitimise the coming in of Yunus's interim regime set after Hasina left for India.

"You know Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has tendered her resignation letter to the president and I have received it," Shahabuddin had said in a televised address to the nation on August 5, hours after Hasina left.

Two months later, however, he claimed that he had only heard that Hasina had resigned, but had no evidence of her resignation. "I tried [to collect the resignation letter] many times but failed. Maybe she did not have the time," Shahabuddin told Dhaka-based newspaper, Janatar Chokh in October 2024.

Shabuddin's pivot had led to protests demanding his removal, a storm that the President ultimately managed to ride out. Shabuddin stayed the President of Bangladesh through the 18 months of the Yunus regime. He alleged that the interim regime tried to remove him from the top office repeatedly.

However, after the Tarique Rahman-led BNP government won the February 12 polls and came to power after the interim regime and Shahabudin got a helping hand from the former, the President has revealed a lot about what he went through during the period.

WHAT BANGLADESH PRESIDENT SHAHABUDDIN SAID ABOUT YUNUS REGIME

Giving the example of the "secretive" trade deal between Bangladesh and the US, which the Yunus regime rushed to sign in its last days in office, and whose fine print remains buried under a Non-Disclosure Agreement, Shahabuddin stated, "Such a state agreement should have been informed to me".

Be it small or big, of course the previous heads of government informed the President. And this is a constitutional obligation. But he [Yunus] did not do it," he said.

According to him, he managed to hold on only due to the support he received from the upper echelons of the BNP, as well as the Armed Forces. "A high-ranking leader from the BNP assured me that I had their support. We want to maintain constitutional continuity. We are not in favour of removing the President through any unconstitutional means," Shahabuddin told Kaler Kontho.

He also mentioned how he was kept under virtual house arrest by the Yunus regime, which prevented him from going abroad for medical care.

"I had a bypass surgery at the University Hospital of Singapore. A year after the surgery, I had a follow-up appointment at the hospital there. I wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to go to Singapore for treatment. In response, I was directly prohibited," Shahabuddin alleged.

He added that he wasn't even allowed to go to the Eidgah Maidan to participate in the Eid prayers on two occasions.

But, days after Shahabuddin made the big claims, not Yunus or his aides, but Jamaat's Shafiqur Rahman took it on himself to attack the President.

IS SHAFIQUR'S CRITIQUE AN ADMISSION OF ISLAMIST-YUNUS NEXUS?

Shahabuddin, breathing fire at Muhammad Yunus and his interim regime, did not stop the Jamaat Ameer from attacking the President even though the Islamist party was not mentioned. The question is why?

The Ameer's reaction to the President's claims gains significance, as it was alleged that Islamist groups like the Jamaat and its male student wing, the Islami Chhatra Shibir, were instrumental in orchestrating the fall of the Awami League government. According to experts, the Islamists and the interim regime had a kind of mutually beneficial relationship from the very start.

Indian Today Digital had earlier reported how the anti-quota movement in Bangladesh transitioned from a peaceful movement to a violent one after it was hijacked by Islamist groups.

Furthermore, many of the student leaders at the forefront of the anti-Hasina movement, like Nahid Islam, who would form the Citizens Party, ended up allying with the Jamaat for the 2026 elections. Many of these student leaders also found ministerial berths in the Yunus Cabinet.

Days after taking office in August 2024, Yunus met Mamunul Haque, the leader of the Islamist group Hefazat-e-Islam.

In return, Yunus facilitated the transition of Bangladesh towards an Islamist Republic by "pampering fundamentalist elements capable of stifling the syncretic Bengali culture and the secular linguistic nationalism that led to the country's violent breakaway from Pakistan in 1971", journalist-author, Subir Bhaumik, wrote in a piece in India Today Digital.

Several measures taken by the Yunus regime enabled the rejuvenation of Islamist forces in Bangladesh. Days after Hasina's departure, the administration lifted the ban on the Jamaat, which was banned by the Awami League government.

Bangladesh, at the same time, gravitated towards Pakistan, militarily and diplomatically.

Moreover, the Yunus administration released several jailed Islamist leaders, including convicted terrorist mastermind Jashimuddin Rahmani, supremo of the Ansarullah Bangla Team. The regime also released a 1971 war criminal, ATM Azharul Islam. In the polls, ATM, who was on death row, won the Rangpur-2 seat.

The alliance with the Jamaat led to the resignation of many genuine student leaders on the eve of the elections. Several women leaders of the NCP quit the party and some decided not to contest the February polls.

Although neither Yunus nor the Islamist groups operating in Bangladesh have openly admitted to the nexus between them, both have clearly benefited from each other's actions, experts opine. Rahman's criticism of Shahabuddin is, thus, less about defending constitutional propriety and more about safeguarding a political arrangement that had served both sides.

- Ends

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