Canada hosts primary assassin of Bangladesh founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Canada has not only provided refuge to fugitives and radicals from India but has given refuge for nearly three decades for other South Asians including infamous ex Bangladesh Army officer Nur Chowdhury, primary assassin of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975.

Chowdhury has been living in Canada for nearly three decades, and current Canadian law restricts sending back convicts, primarily to countries where death sentences are carried out. Sources said Ottawa remains obstinate on its position on the matter of extradition.

Several requests by the Bangladesh government to extradite Noor Chowdhury have fallen on deaf ears and Dhaka may yet again move Ottawa on the issue, ET has learnt.


On several occasions Bangladesh requested Canada and the US to extradite the killers of the founder of the country Sheikh Mujib, sources said. However, both countries have said the matter was under the jurisdiction of the legal process.

Bangladesh had also urged Canada last year to find an alternative way to extradite Chowdhury as current Canadian law prohibits such a return.

For a long time, the Bangladesh government has been trying to bring back Mujib’s killers including fugitive MA Rashed Chowdhury, who, like Nur Chowdhury, was sentenced to death by the country's court. Rashed Chowdhury and his family have been in the US since 1996.

Rahman, along with most of his family members, was assassinated on August 15, 1975, by a group of Army officers that included Chowdhury who before independence of Bangladesh served in the Pakistan Army. Later in the 1970s and 1980s, he was posted in various Bangladesh Embassies abroad.

Five of the 12 condemned convicts in the Mujib assassination case were executed in January 2010, a year after the Awami League-led alliance government retook power.