2012 ICT Skype controversy

The 2012 ICT Skype controversy was the leaking of Skype conversations and emails between Mohammed Nizamul Huq, head judge and chairman of Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal, and Ahmed Ziauddin, a Bangladeshi lawyer based in Brussels. These conversations took place during the prosecution of the accused for alleged war crimes during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.

According to The Economist, the recordings and emails suggested that the Bangladesh Government pressured and attempted to intervene in the International Crimes Tribunal to speed up proceedings. The neutrality and independence of Huq was called into question, as Ziauddin appeared to help him to prepare documents for the tribunal and made detailed recommendations for Huq. Ziauddin also advised prosecutors, including the chief prosecutor Zaed-al-Malum, and informed Huq about how the prosecutors may develop their cases. This resulted in a connection between the judge, adviser and the prosecution.

The 17 hours of conversations between 28 August and 20 October 2012 and more than 230 e-mails between September 2011 and September 2012 were disclosed to The Economist. The Bangladeshi newspaper Amar Desh also received the conversations, and published a report on 9 December, followed by the transcripts in full. On 13 December, a court injunction banned Bangladeshi newspapers from publishing the materials, at which time Amar Desh stopped further publication.

On 11 December 2012, Huq resigned from his position as chairman of ICT-1, citing personal reasons. Despite demands from Jamaat-e-Islami for the Tribunal to be scrapped, the Law Minister Shafique Ahmed said that Huq's resignation would not hamper trial proceedings. On 13 December, Fazle Kabir, then head of the second tribunal (ICT-2), was named as the new chairman. The defendants' applications for retrials were rejected.

The International Crimes Tribunal was set up in Bangladesh in 2009 to prosecute suspects accused of war crimes during the Bangladesh Liberation War. The Awami League had pledged to do so in the campaign for the 2008 election. Between 2010 and 2012, the tribunal indicted eleven men as suspects; they are now political leaders, nine from Jamaat-e-Islami, two from the BNP and zero from the Awami League. At the time of the Skype controversy, the trials of Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, Motiur Rahman Nizami and Ghulam Azam were underway at ICT-1 and the trial of Delwar Hossain Sayeedi had nearly finished.

On 6 December 2012, the presiding judge of ICT-1, Mohammed Nizamul Huq, passed an order requiring two members of The Economist to appear before the court, demanding that they explain how they came into possession of e-mails and conversations between him and lawyer Ziauddin. This order came after The Economist contacted Huq about the material they had. The order named Ahmed Ziauddin as an expert assisting the judges, explaining that the judges needed research support as the tribunal is based on new law. On 9 December, the newspaper Amar Desh began publishing reports and transcripts of the conversations, and The Economist published a further report on 15 December.

According to The Economist, the Skype conversations and e-mails suggested that the Bangladesh Government pressured and attempted to intervene in the International Crimes Tribunal to speed proceedings up. During a conversation between Huq and Ziauddin on 14 October, Huq referred to the government as

Absolutely crazy for a judgment. The government has gone totally mad. They have gone completely mad, I am telling you. They want a judgment by 16th December (Victory Day)...it's as simple as that.