CDA PRESSES BDG ON KIBRIA CASE

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 DHAKA 003901

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/10/2015
TAGS: PGOV PREL BG
SUBJECT: CDA PRESSES BDG ON KIBRIA CASE


Classified By: A/DCM D.C. McCullough, reasons para 1.4 b, d


1. (S) Summary. CDA told BDG officials the Kibria case
continues to receive high-level USG scrutiny, and expressed
frustration that since May our requests for cooperation have
produced only delays and half-measures. The USG, she said,
does not want to be in the awkward position of saying BDG
cooperation has ended. Home Minister of State Babar assured
CDA he is committed to justice in the Kibria case, but was
defensive on several points. The next day, MHA convoked RLA
with new promises of cooperation, including a much-improved
formula for meeting with lead defendant Quayyum. End Summary.


2. (SBU) On August 9, CDA and RLA met for 40 minutes with
Home Affairs Minister of State Lutfuzzaman Babar. Also
present were General Haider of NSI, PMO Foreign Affairs
Advisor Reaz Rahman, Home Secretary Safar Hossain, and MHA
Joint Secretary Muhammad Mohsin.


3. (C) Babar characterized as excellent his recent visit to
the USG. The Kibria case, he said, featured prominently in
most of his meetings, and he had assured his interlocutors
that Bangladesh is fully cooperating with the USG on the
investigation and that he was committed to seeing justice
done. Legal action by the Kibria family, he regretted, has
just delayed the start of the trial for up to three years.


4. (S) CDA expressed frustration with the BDG's dilatory
response to our requests for information critical to the
investigation. Regarding phone records for August
2004-December 2004 for Quayyum, the lead defendant, she
stated that reliable sources assure us that two years of data
are kept on hard disc which can be retrieved with a formal
MHA request. MHA's letter to a customer service agent, who
replied that records are kept for only two months, should not
be the end of the matter. She suggested that Babar
personally call the managing director of Grameen telephone to
seek his help. Babar turned to Home Secretary Hossain, and
instructed him to make the call.


5. (S) Concerning the phone records of PMO Political
Secretary Haris Chowdhury, General Haider stated that the

SIPDIS
logs for Chowdhury's residence land line are erased after
three months. For the office phone, he claimed, engineers
were sitting down in his office with Nortel to try and
retrieve the data. He stated that the hard disc may have to
be sent to Singapore to retrieve the data because Bangladesh
does not have the technology to retrieve erased material from
the recycle bin. Haider added, however, that he did have
"some" records for the residence for November and December.
He then complained that if we had requested these records
earlier, there would have been no problem. (Note: We first
requested the records on April 28 at the end of the FBI
interview with Harris Chowdhury, who agreed to provide them.
Haider, who was at the interview, undertook to take care of
it.) Babar told Hossain to call also about the Chowdhury
records.


6. (S) CDA expressed concern that conditions, in a moving
police van, for the planned one-hour meeting between A/LEGAT
and RLA with Quayyum were not conducive to a proper
interview. We agreed to the conditions to be flexible, but,
if a proper interview were not possible, we would request
another. She stressed that at least two hours were necessary
for the interview. Babar responded testily that "we are
going out of our way" and the USG should not "want to see us
embarrassed" in the media. The BDG, he insisted, must "do
everything lawfully" as well as maintain confidentiality.
Once the charge sheet was submitted (on April 30),
Bangladesh's criminal procedure rules greatly complicated
giving us access to Quayyum, and the U.S. should have asked
to see him before that. CDA noted that we had requested
access first in March, which led to a brief, unsatisfactory
encounter between A/LEGAT and Quayyum on March 27, and we had
subsequently asked for a second meeting on numerous
occasions.


7. (S) CDA told Babar that the Kibria case continues to
receive high-level USG scrutiny, and that we did not want to
be in the awkward position of having to say that BDG
cooperation on the investigation had effectively come to an
end. The BDG officials took the point.


8. (S) On August 10, MHA's Mohsin convoked RLA to inform her
that a meeting with Quayyum would now be possible in a room
in the Moulvibazaar jail on August 16 and could last as long
as necessary. (Comment: This arrangement is a vast
improvement over the original plan.) He also said that
Grameen "will try their best" to get the records, and that a
policeman was sent that morning to pick up whatever data
could be retrieved. Referring to the issue of badly copied
bank documents that obscured the payee's name but showed
telltale fragments of underlying documents not handed over,
he promised the documents would be taken out of their binder
and properly copied one by one.


9. (S) Comment: We have clearly captured the attention of a
nervous BDG. However, it is still unclear whether the BDG's
frustrating response to our requests stems from a lack of
will, indolence, a cover-up, or all three. The meeting with
Quayyum, assuming it comes off, could make or break the case.
CHAMMAS