"Our people will react violently to this," a member of the Bengali liberation underground whispered to TIME Correspondent David Greenway in Dacca last week. The warning proved all too true. Sheik Mujibur ("Mujib") Rahman, 51, fiery leader of East Pakistan and the man who may hold the key to ending the bloody five-month-old civil war, had just gone on trial for his life before a secret military court in West Pakistan, more than 1,500 miles away. Late that same afternoon, a bomb exploded in the lobby of Dacca's Intercontinental Hotel.
Flash and Roar. Correspondent Greenway, who suffered a concussion in the blast, cabled: "I was standing in front of the cigar store in the lobby when, with a flash and a roar, the wall a few feet in front of me seemed to buckle and dissolve. I was flung to the floor. That was fortunate, because great chunks of bricks and concrete flew over me, crashing through the lobby and blowing men and furniture through the plate-glass windows onto the sidewalk.
"Part of an air duct came down on my head and I could not move. There was thick, choking smoke and water spewing from broken pipes. Soon the smoke began to clear. People milled about the crumpled, crying victims lying bleeding on the lawn. None, luckily, was dead. One girl, an employee of the hotel, had been completely buried under three feet of rubble. When they dug her out, all she could say was: 'I knew I should not have come to work today.' "
The timing of the bombing tends to confirm that Mujib's trial will further stiffen Bengali resistance to the occupying West Pakistani army. If there are any chances of a political settlement —and they seem almost nonexistent—imposition of the death penalty could dash them.
Strict Secrecy. Mujib's political role and his astonishing popularity in East Pakistan in a sense precipitated the civil war (TIME cover, Aug. 2). In last December's elections for a constitutional assembly, his Awami League won an overwhelming 167 of 169 seats in the East. That was enough to guarantee Mujib a majority in the 313-seat national assembly, and ensured that he would have become Prime Minister of Pakistan. It was also enough to alarm President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and the West Pakistani establishment, which has run the geographically divided country since its partition from India in 1947.
Yahya and Co. feared that Mujib's ascendancy would mean far greater autonomy for the long-exploited East Pakistanis, and the Pakistani army ruthlessly moved to crush the Bengali movement.
There is little doubt that Mujib will be convicted of the undefined charges of "waging war against Pakistan and other offenses." When he was arrested last March 26, hours after the army crackdown, Yahya publicly branded him a traitor and hinted that he "might not live." Observed one Western diplomat last week: "You know how hot the Punjabi plains are this time of year. You might say Mujib has a snowball's chance of acquittal."