The starting point for any discussion has to be Article 30 (“Prohibition of foreign titles, etc”) of the Constitution of Bangladesh, which says: “No citizen shall, without the prior approval of the President, accept any title, honour, award or decoration from any foreign state.”

The Constitution throughout has references to the “State” as a description of the sovereign entity that is the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Evidently, in referring to “any foreign state”, Article 30 contemplates a definition of “state” that would apply equally to Bangladesh. The foreign award-giving “state” must exercise sovereign power over a territory and be able to conclude treaties with other sovereign states. Of course, from time to time there will be entities that exercise independent control over territories that are not accepted by Bangladesh or other sovereign states as having the legal right to exercise such independence. In Bangladesh and in other countries, any question in any such country as to whether a purportedly sovereign entity should be accepted as a foreign “state” is determined by a declaration from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (by whatever name). If an award-giving foreign entity is not recognised as a sovereign state (or as its agent) by the Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then an award from such a foreign entity would not be caught by Article 30.

I should state at this point that I have some personal interest in this matter. My late father Ambassador AFM Abul Fateh, during his tenure (1976-1977) as High Commissioner for Bangladesh in the UK, received in February 1977 the Silver Jubilee medal along with some other ambassadors. The medal was awarded by the British Queen, acting as sovereign head of a sovereign state. He informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the award. The Ministry, of course, was the channel appropriate for him to the President, and is the agent of the President in relations with foreign states. My father was a citizen at that time only of Bangladesh. Likewise, Jharna Dhara Chowdhury is a citizen only of Bangladesh. Since the award of the Padma Shri is by the President of India acting on behalf of the Republic of India, a sovereign state, to respect Article 30 there should be an application by her to the President of Bangladesh for approval of her acceptance.

Photo: Reuters

The distinction should, however, be understood between what is an award by a sovereign state and what is not. The elevated nature of an award-giving institution or its membership is no indication that it is a sovereign state.

Transnational entities such as the Islamic Development Bank are associations of sovereign states and their representatives have privileges in Bangladesh akin to the representatives of sovereign states. But these bodies are not considered sovereign states by anyone, if only because they have no territory. An award by the Islamic Development Bank, therefore, would not be caught by Article 30. The Republic of Somaliland exercises purportedly sovereign authority over the former British Somaliland, but it is not accepted as a sovereign state by Bangladesh. Therefore an award by Somaliland would also not be caught by Article 30. The American State of Delaware is called a “state”, as is the Indian State of Nagaland, and the Australian State of Tasmania, and each of them exercises governmental authority over a territory. But none of them has sovereign authority or acts as the agent of a sovereign entity. Each is a province or constituting unit within a federation, and is not a sovereign state. Therefore an award by Delaware or Nagaland or Tasmania can readily be taken up by any Bangladeshi citizen.

There are some august institutions which enjoy the patronage of, and may even be headed by, the heads of their host states and which bestow awards of great prestige. For example, the Académie Française (French Academy) was established in the 17th century in France under royal patronage, is universally accepted as the leading body on French language and culture, and is headed by the French President. Members of the Académie  are invested by the French President, and on behalf of the Académie the French President presents its prizes in the arts to distinguished recipients. But the Académie is not an agency of the French state, and its prizes are no more awards of the French state than the Oscars presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are awards of the United States. Therefore an award by the Académie Française, or an Oscar, can readily be taken up by any Bangladeshi citizen.

However, there are persons who are citizens not only of Bangladesh but also of one or more other sovereign foreign states, and who have received awards from such foreign states. As will be seen, their position is not necessarily the same as of those who are citizens only of Bangladesh. Before looking at their position, I again should state that I have some personal interest. I have citizenship both of Bangladesh and the United Kingdom, although it is extremely unlikely that I will ever receive an honour from either State. I acquired my British citizenship after a change in the relevant Bangladeshi law allowed such dual citizenship. I will come to the details of the relevant law in a moment. I should also state that this change in law came about upon the recommendation to the Bangladesh Government of my father, noting the wishes of Bangladeshis settled in the UK not to be forced to choose between citizenship of Bangladesh and of the UK.

The code of citizenship for Bangladesh  is to be found in the Bangladesh Citizenship (Temporary Provisions) Order 1972 (PO 149 of 1972), which came into force on 15 December 1972. This code, being the later law, overrode the earlier Citizenship Act 1951 inherited from Pakistan, although the 1951 law has never expressly been repealed in Bangladesh. Despite the description as “Temporary Provisions”, the BCTPO 1972 subsists to this day. (The French have a saying: “There is nothing more permanent than the temporary.”) On 11 February 1978 the BCTPO 1972 was amended, by the insertion of a new Article 2B, to allow any person lawfully to have Bangladeshi citizenship at the same time as citizenship of any country in North America or Europe or of any other country which the Government might gazette for this purpose.

What does being the citizen of a country entail? In the case of Bangladesh vs Professor Golam Azam (1994) 23 CLC (AD) and 46 DLR (AD) 192, and as part of a unanimous Supreme Court, the following was stated by Mustafa Kamal J (later Chief Justice), in a judgment approvingly mentioned by two of the other three judges: “It is true that citizenship is the status of being a citizen and that a citizen is one who, under the constitution and laws of a particular State, is a member of the political community, owing allegiance… and being entitled to the enjoyment of full civil rights.”

The offer of an honour or other award by a sovereign state to one of its citizens is a mark of the esteem that state has for a member of its “political community”.  In principle, it must be the case that a person with “full civil rights” should be able to take up unhindered the offer of an honour or other award from a sovereign state to whom he/she is “owing allegiance”, offered to that person as “a member of the political community” of that state. Indeed, Article 30 is found within Part III of the Constitution, headed “Fundamental Rights”, presumably because the authors of the Constitution regarded the right to receive awards from a state as a fundamental right of a citizen of that state. The citizenship laws of Bangladesh since 11 February 1978 have accepted that a citizen of Bangladesh lawfully may be a citizen of certain other sovereign states, possessing all the rights that entails. Therefore a person who receives an award from (and is a citizen of) one of those states should be considered as receiving that award not as a citizen of Bangladesh subject to Article 30 but as a citizen of that foreign state.

A contrary proposition would need to be tested against one of the fundamental principles of the state policy of Bangladesh. Article 25 (”Promotion of international peace, security and solidarity”) within Part II (”Fundamental Principles of State Policy”) of the Constitution provides: “The State shall base its international relations on the principles of respect for national sovereignty and equality, non interference in the internal affairs of other countries, peaceful settlement of international disputes, and respect for international law and the principles enunciated in the United Nations Charter…” The award of honours on its citizens is one of the expressions of “national sovereignty” of an independent country. When dual citizenship of Bangladesh and another country is accepted in Bangladeshi law, external hindrance by Bangladesh of such award by such other country would constitute unwarranted “interference in the internal affairs” of that other country, contrary to the state policy of Bangladesh.

It therefore follows that no award by a foreign sovereign state to one of its citizens would be subject to Article 30 if both of the following conditions apply: that person is a citizen also of Bangladesh, and that foreign state is recognised as a state approved for dual citizenship under Article 2B of the  BCTPO 1972.

What could happen to a Bangladeshi citizen were he/she to accept an award from a foreign state of which he/she is not a citizen, or of a foreign state not accepted for dual citizenship?

There is no offence in the general laws of Bangladesh dealing with the acceptance of an award from a foreign state. Nor is there any offence created in the Constitution to deal with a failure to respect Article 30. There is an offence ascribed of sedition by Article 7A (”Offence of abrogation, suspension, etc of the Constitution”) of the Constitution: “If any person, by show of force or use of force or by any other un-constitutional means” undermines “this Constitution or any of its articles”. But if any Bangladeshi citizen accepts an honour from a foreign State of which he is not a citizen, or of a foreign state not approved for dual citizenship under Article 2B of the  BCTPO 1972, it is extremely difficult to see how this acceptance could ever be effected via “force or by any other un-constitutional means”. The receipt of the foreign State honour would be unconstitutional in Bangladesh, but the means (such as purchase and use of an airline ticket to travel to the foreign state in order to receive the honour) could not be unconstitutional. The Government could apply to the Courts for an injunction to stop what quite clearly would be a breach of public policy, but the prospects of such an application, when no person could be harmed by such a breach, must be doubtful.

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Anatul Fateh is an Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, and Head of Chambers of a law firm in Dhaka. He is based in London and was formerly a practising barrister in England.

French writer André Malraux (right) with Abul Fateh; November 1972, Paris

My father AFM Abul Fateh died on December 4, 2010. He was among the last survivors of the innermost circle of the Mujibnagar government-in-exile of Bangladesh, in which he served as adviser to the acting president and the most senior civil servant as well as being an Ambassador-at-Large. While there are several achievements in his long career to which one could point, he perhaps is best remembered for his defection in extraordinary circumstances in August 1971 to the Bangladesh government from his service as a Pakistani ambassador: the first serving ambassador to join the Bangladesh liberation movement.

For many years this was not a story I wished to write: there was the possibility that one or two individuals might still be vulnerable if too many details were given. Much of it anyway was the subject in 2003 of a National Geographic documentary (Running for Freedom: Roxanna’s Story), taking as its departure point the mixed antecedents of my brother’s daughter Roxana [correct spelling]. Now, however, four decades have passed and, before all memories die, a fuller narration of the events should perhaps be told.

My father had been serving as Deputy High Commissioner of Pakistan in Calcutta before in late 1970 he moved to Baghdad as Ambassador of Pakistan to Iraq. In those days the Iraqi President was Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, but real power long had lain in the hands of his nephew-in-law and Vice-Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Saddam Hussein. I had not completed 14 years in age but I was an avid newshound and was well aware of the brutality of the ruling Baath Party both in its internal politics and in Iraqi society, and of the unpleasant histories of many in the RCC. While the subject interested me it was not, however, something in my privileged life as the son of a Pakistani ambassador I could ever imagine to be of immediate personal concern.

On March 25 1971, my father summoned me and my younger brother Eenasul to my parents’ bedroom to listen to what was being billed as an important broadcast by General Yahya Khan, the military President of Pakistan. In slurred tones – the product presumably of the whisky of which he was overly fond – Yahya announced the end of political negotiations by his regime with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – popularly known already as Bangabandhu – and the Awami League that had won an overall majority in the Pakistani national assembly and almost every seat in East Pakistan. My father made no comment in front of me, and I left the room. Over the months to come before the defection, I would read in the foreign press and hear on the BBC World Service about the mass killings and other atrocities being perpetrated by the Pakistani army and its collaborators in the future Bangladesh. My father from time to time would ask what I thought about what was happening, but at no time did he indicate to anyone other than my mother what his own views were on the genocide of his people.

On April 17 1971, the Mujibnagar government took their oaths of office. The most significant figures in it were my father’s university friends, in particular Vice-President Syed Nazrul Islam, who was acting as head of state in the place of a jailed Bangabandhu. Hussain Ali, my father’s successor as Deputy High Commissioner in Calcutta, and the Calcutta mission promptly defected to the Mujibnagar government. Two diplomats in New Delhi (Second Secretary KM Shehabuddin and Assistant Press Attaché Amjadul Haq) had already defected to the Bangladesh movement, even before the formation of the Mujibnagar government, and other Bengali diplomats around the world now started to follow. However, no Bengali ambassador was defecting. This was to change.

We were visited by a Pathan, Malek Aman, who had served as our cook when my father had been Councillor in the Pakistani High Commission in Delhi (immediately before his posting to Calcutta). Our Pathan said with much sorrow that if only my father had continued in Calcutta then the Calcutta mission’s defection could never have happened. It was not long before he had greater cause for sorrow.

The Indian Ambassador in Iraq at the time was KRP Singh. He paid a courtesy call on my father at the Pakistani Embassy in the Karradat Mariam area of Baghdad. This was unexceptional – diplomatic niceties were being maintained even if relations between India and Pakistan were strained. Then, late one evening in July 1971, his wife arrived unheralded at our official residence in the pleasant suburb of Al Mansur City. The lateness of the evening meant that it was less likely that anyone was in the vicinity who might be tasked by the Iraqi security services to watch my father (diplomats could expect to be watched from time to time). But to any watcher it would appear that this was a social call by one ambassador’s wife on another: and my mother and Mrs Singh were indeed acquainted and on good terms. This was not, however, a social call. To my mother’s surprise, she was informed by our domestic staff that Mrs Singh was asking to see my father, rather than my mother. Mrs Singh then handed an envelope to my father. It contained a letter signed by the members of the Mujibnagar cabinet, headed by the Acting President, informing my father that they would be delighted if he agreed to join the liberation movement, and that arrangements would be handled by the Indians to get our family safely out of Iraq. On reading out the letter and without even speaking to my mother sitting by his side, whom he usually would consult on all important decisions, my father said “yes” and counter-signed the letter. Mrs Singh promptly departed with the letter, ending a visit lasting less than ten minutes.

My parents were now in a difficult position. There could be no doubt that the Iraqi government, which was anxious to have friendly ties with the Pakistani government after a minor spat over alleged support by Iraq of Baluch rebels in western Pakistan, would hand over my father to Pakistan at the first hint of support by him of the cause of Bangladesh. But at the same time how could he leave Iraq with his whole family, freely and without suspicion?

My parents gave out that they intended to send my brother and me to boarding school in England. This was a perfectly logical choice, because we were being taught by my father (a teacher before he became a diplomat) under correspondence with an English long-distance tutorial institution, the Parents’ National Educational Union, and had from time to time attended British schools. Things were crated in our house, ready to be taken away. Supposedly, this was being done for my brother and me, going to England in advance of our schooling there. But not the things only of my brother and me were crated. British visas were obtained so that my parents could accompany my brother and me to England to start our schooling. Meanwhile, it was necessary for my father to deceive everyone else as to his true allegiances.

My father continued to put forward the views of the Pakistani military regime to other foreign ambassadors and government officials in Baghdad. Perhaps, however, my father was not always able to appear as enthusiastic as required in his support of the government in Islamabad. His personal secretary, a Bengali man, seemed to suspect something because he insisted with much feeling on giving my father an expensive pen set.

During this time, my father spoke to the Iraqi Health Minister – one of the few women in senior positions in Iraq – to secure some local tuition for me in Physics and Chemistry, subjects in which for many years I had not studied. The Health Minister arranged that I would go to Baghdad University to be taught by the Dean himself of that institution. Consequently, at under 14 years of age I started making regular visits to Baghdad University. My father even was present as an honoured chief guest and prize-giver at the main annual event of the university. Unknown to me, my father was using my regular visits to Baghdad University, which indicated that he felt comfortable in Baghdad, as part of the smokescreen of his true intentions.

Small was the number of people who were apprised of his intended defection: my mother, members of the Indian and Bangladeshi cabinets, a few Indian intelligence officials, and of course Mr and Mrs KRP Singh and a few others in the Indian Embassy in Baghdad. My father would meet Indian Embassy intelligence personnel secretly from time to time. Armed with a flashlight to signal his presence, he would leave our house in Al-Mansur City late at night and go to a small nearby park, then return with his contact to discuss and make the arrangements for our family’s departure. I remember waking up once in my first floor bedroom in the small hours of the morning, and hearing voices. I went to the top of the staircase and looked down towards the lit doorway of the study, from where the voices came. Too sleepy to think much of this, I went back to bed.

Soon there was bad news. The Pakistani Foreign Minister was summoning a gathering of regional Pakistani ambassadors in Tehran, where a meeting of the Central Treaty Organisation (an alliance of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan) would be taking place. My father was among the ambassadors summoned. The Indians by now had come to fear that my father was under suspicion. He would not, they feared, be returning from Tehran to Baghdad. But the summons could not be refused. An abrupt, drastic change in plans was needed.

My father informed his officers that he would take his official car and travel by road from Baghdad to Tehran. This was a distance of around 700 kilometres. His date of departure was to be 15 August 1971.

The day came. The embassy’s bank account was with the Karradat Mariam branch of Rafidain Bank, and my father as ambassador was able to transact over his sole signature. My father informed the bank manager that he would need to withdraw the embassy’s funds, and would come a little before the bank closed. There was some construction work at the embassy, and my father showed such interest in it that the appointed time with the bank passed. My father then turned up a quarter-hour after the bank closed. He knew that the bank manager would wait for the Pakistani Ambassador, and that the lateness of the hour would ensure there were no witnesses. My father withdrew the entirety of the embassy’s funds, totalling the equivalent of £28.000 (a substantial sum in those days), and departed home. Fortunately, as it appears, the bank manager did not report this rather unusual transaction immediately to the attention of the Iraqi authorities, who would certainly have been curious. The money came to be allocated via the Indian Embassy to the use of the Mujibnagar government.

From our house my father set off with his driver on the road to Tehran. As they approached the border with Iran, however, my father told the driver that he was experiencing chest pains. The driver drove back home as ordered. It was evening as the car reached Al Mansur City. My father then said that he was feeling much better. He would make arrangements to leave the next day, he said, by plane for Tehran. The driver was no longer needed: he could go to his own home.

I was surprised to see my father back, but he went up to my parents’ bedroom and lay down on the bed without a word to me. My mother told my brother and me that my father was not feeling well. After some time he came down. Our two domestic staff members, as it happened both Bengalis, were given the evening off with some money to see a movie in a local cinema. They went out of the main house to their quarters at the back, and my mother locked the back door.

My parents then summoned my brother and me to their bedroom. Calmly my father informed us that we were leaving Iraq that evening for London, because he was joining the Bangladesh freedom movement. Everything was ready for us to go, but meanwhile we must not answer any phone calls to the house.

There were several phone calls that night to our house, to the ringing of which I listened with great apprehension. I did not know it at the time, but my father’s driver had contacted the First Secretary in the embassy, and informed him how the Ambassador had returned and that my father would need to take a plane the next day to Tehran. The First Secretary was most concerned, and was trying to reach my father both to check on his health and to take instructions for the flight to Tehran. Fortunately, after his unsuccessful calls, the First Secretary did not decide to visit our house just yet.

My father went out of the house to his usual rendezvous place, returning with his contact from the Indian Embassy. Soon afterwards a van drew up to our house, and loaded up those of our things that would be shipped. My mother had readied suitcases for the things that we would take with us to London. A large black car also arrived at our home. The front door of the house was locked, and we were driven off to the Indian Embassy.

A vast and elaborate buffet had been laid out in the garden for our dinner. The Indian Ambassador, his wife, and the other Indians present plied all four of us with attention, seemingly unable sufficiently to express the joy and honour they were declaring they felt by our presence. Unfortunately, I at least had lost all appetite.

The dinner to me seemed interminable. But eventually we climbed back into our assigned car, which was preceded by another carrying an Indian intelligence officer. We set off for the border with Kuwait.

The sounds of frogs and insects accompanied us as we made our dark journey through the Basra marshes to the border with Kuwait. Every now and then lights from other vehicles would shine behind or before us, leading me each time to wonder if the Iraqi security services had discovered our flight and would stop us. Soon after dawn on August 16 1971 we reached the Iraqi border post.

Our timing was good, because we were among the first travellers of the day. Our intelligence man got out of his car, and took our family’s Pakistani diplomatic passports. I was horrified. Whatever would the border officials think when the Pakistani ambassador’s passport was presented alongside an Indian diplomatic passport? I decided that I would rather face discovery at the desk than await our fate passively in our car. So I accompanied the intelligence officer into the post.

My horror increased as my companion warmly greeted the border official to whom he handed all the passports, and then laughingly told me that the official was a Pakistani. The official laughed with him. Then I realised what was happening. The Pakistani was working as an agent of Indian intelligence, and was present to ensure we got over the border safely. As it transpired, he also ensured that there was no Iraqi record of our family’s exit that morning through that post.

Fortune remained on our side, and no Iraqi official wandered up to inquire why two diplomatic cars were present at the post so early in the morning. We drove into Kuwait City, to the local office of Indian Airlines. The manager had been instructed that some special visitors would be arriving who had to be kept from public view, and we accordingly were confined to the back rooms of the office. From there we were driven to Kuwait Airport. Seats had been readied on a BOAC flight for us to London.

In Baghdad that morning, things were turning interesting. With no response still to phone calls to our number, the First Secretary and the military attaché turned up at our house. Our domestic staff were waiting outside, locked out. The two officers broke into the house, and found it empty of us and our belongings. Soon they were rushing away, to inform the Pakistani and Iraqi governments of our disappearance. It was not long before they also discovered that the embassy’s bank account had been cleaned out.

As my father later was told by the Iraqi Ambassador in Paris (who at the time was head of the Foreign Ministry), the Iraqi government had a collective fit. They and the Pakistani regime of course suspected strongly that my father had defected to the Bangladesh movement, but they had no information of where we had gone. The Iraqis also suspected that we might have been taken by Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, whether voluntarily or as bargaining chips. The entire Iraqi intelligence network was ordered as a matter of the highest priority to search for us throughout the country. At the same time, Baghdad Airport and planes awaiting departure from it were searched, and planes that had departed were recalled on some pretext and also searched.

Back in Kuwait, we turned up at the BOAC counter in Kuwait Airport. A BOAC agent checked the passenger list against our passports. Our names were not on the passenger list. Then an Indian hastened to the desk, and waved away the agent. He was the Assistant Manager of BOAC in Kuwait. Our names replaced four false names on the passenger list, and we were escorted to our seats. Iraqi agents were plentiful in Kuwait, and Indian intelligence had made every effort to hide our departure from Kuwait Airport.

Our flight touched down at Heathrow Airport the afternoon of August 16 1971. I have never been so grateful for a touchdown as I was then, and I imagine the relief was the same for my father.

Others in the liberation movement went through greater dangers than us, as my father would tell even my mother. But surely few others could voluntarily (rather than out of necessity) have risked as much danger both to themselves and their children as did my father for the sake of his country. Our family was used to a comfortable existence, indeed a privileged one, which could have continued indefinitely. If we had been detected, as could easily have happened several times on August 15-16 1971, life for us abruptly would have been rendered singularly unpleasant. In my father’s case at least, life might even have been abbreviated, in an unfortunate accident such as the Iraqi authorities were perfectly able to arrange. As it was, fortune indeed favoured the brave.

The Pakistani regime was enraged as the details of my father’s departure came to light. It was bad enough that he was the first ambassador to have defected, and that too in so dramatic a fashion. But insult was added to injury by the emptying out of the embassy funds. They demanded that the British government extradite my father to Pakistan for the “crime”. Of course, as a British Foreign Office official assured my parents would be the case, the British government absolutely refused. The fury at my father lasted for some time yet. A Pakistani terrorist group called Black December came to be created after the liberation of Bangladesh, and an Independence Day reception in 1973 given by my father as Bangladesh Ambassador in Paris was surrounded by French police after Soviet and Indian intelligence suspected that he would be targeted at the reception by Black December.

It was perhaps fortunate that my father never sought recognition by his country after 1971, whether for his contributions to the liberation movement in 1971 or for later contributions to his country’s interests, because none was ever given. Rather, my father shrank from public life, with the character of which he became ever more disillusioned as time passed. Bangabandhu in 1972, after unsuccessfully proposing that my father continue as Adviser to Bangabandhu, had asked him to become Foreign Minister, which offer my father declined so as to be Ambassador in Paris. Bangabandhu then said that the position of Foreign Minister would be kept warm for my father until he was ready to cease being an ambassador. But this was the last time that my father considered a public role, as he saw standards in national life start an almost continuous deterioration. He was horror-struck by the murders of Bangabandhu and most of his family on 15 August 1975, the news of which broke just as Bangabandhu’s two daughters were to set out from Brussels to stay as family guests in our home in Paris. (Bangabandhu had attended my parents’ wedding in January 1956 and he and my father had an oft-renewed friendship.) This was to be followed on November 3 1975 by the murders of my father’s friends in the Mujibnagar government. Subsequent developments showed to my father that Bangladesh was not leaving the depths in public character demonstrated by these events. Bangladesh was changing in its governance, but not for the better, while my father stayed unchanged with the ideals for which he had risked his family in 1971. My father insisted against then President Ershad’s wishes on retiring from service in 1982, and he returned to live in Dhaka. He retreated into intellectual interests, of which he had a broad range, and lived on quietly with my mother in Dhaka for 10 years.

Memories of his actions in August 1971 became tinged ever more with sadness for him as my father witnessed the ever-growing contrast between what he then had hoped for his country and the actuality of the society in which he and my mother were living. Eventually he found this insupportable, and in 1992 he emigrated with my mother to live near my brother and me in London. It was in London, therefore, and not in the country for which he had risked much, that he died.

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A(bul) F(azal) M(uhammad) Abul Fateh – 16 May 1924 (Kishorganj, Bangladesh) to 4 December 2010 (London, UK) – Ambassador of Pakistan in Iraq 1970-1971; Adviser to the Acting President of Bangladesh 1971-1972; Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh 1971-1972; Ambassador of Bangladesh in France 1972-1976 and to UNESCO 1974-1976; High Commissioner for Bangladesh in UK 1976-1977; Ambassador of Bangladesh in Algeria 1977-1982.

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Anatul Fateh is a London-based lawyer.