David Bergman

David Bergman (born 1965) is a British investigative journalist. Bergman has worked for Bangladeshi and British newspapers. He was first known in Bangladesh for his reporting on war crimes committed during the Bangladesh Liberation War. An investigative documentary on the subject he worked as a reporter and researcher for British television in 1995 won an award. Twenty years later, he was convicted of contempt of court by Bangladesh's special war crimes tribunal in 2015 for contradicting the official death toll of the war. Bergman has also contributed to The New York Times and Foreign Policy.

Bergman is a editor and contributor to Netra News, a Bangladeshi news website funded by National Endowment for Democracy, a non-government, bipartisan, US-based organisation, funded by the US Congress and based in Sweden. He was interviewed for the Al Jazeera documentary All the Prime Minister's Men.

Bergman was the executive director of the Centre for Corporate Accountability, which promoted the enactment of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 in the United Kingdom.

Personal David Bergman is the son of Alan Bergman from Hadley Wood, in north London. He holds degrees in both politics and law and his law degree is from the University of Birmingham. Bergman is married to Bangladeshi lawyer and writer Sara Hossain, His father-in-law is Dr. Kamal Hossain, who has been the president of the Gano Forum political party in Bangladesh since he founded it in 1992.

Activism in Bhopal Gita Sahgal, who later produced War Crimes File, said she first met Bergman when he was politically active in the relief work after the Bhopal disaster in India. Other organizations providing relief to the victims of the Bhopal disaster said they were harassed or prevented from being effective because of government intervention.

In September 1986, when Bergman was 21 years old, he was held in custody in violation of India's Foreigners Act and National Security Act and was accused of working for Union Carbide. His case was heard before the Supreme Court, He also published an article in a law journal about these competing views.

Workers' rights Bergman was affiliated with the Centre for Corporate Accountability as its executive director for nine years before stepping down in 2009 when it closed. While at this organization, Bergman worked on legal issues related to workers' safety issues and the Centre supported the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. The law went into effect in 2008 and allows corporations to be charged with manslaughter that occurs inside the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, including multinationals.

Journalism David Bergman is an investigative journalist and previously worked for the UK's Twenty Twenty. He has formerly worked at several Bangladeshi newspapers, including New Age, The Daily Star and bdnews24.com. In addition to writing for Bangladeshi papers, Bergman has contributed to Foreign Policy and The Economist. His coverage of the International War Crimes Tribunal appeared in The Independent newspaper.

Between 1999 and 2009, Bergman headed the human rights organisation Centre for Corporate Accountability and advocated for legal reforms on work-related deaths. The program received a special commendation in the "Best International Current Affairs Award" category from the Royal Television Society in 1995, which was for its "courageous exposé of Islamic extremists now living in Britain". The film was subjected to a libel charge by the men featured in the film.

Bergman's personal blog Bangladesh Politico follows the proceedings of the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh, a tribunal set up with solely domestic judges to use domestic law. In December 2012, Justice Mohammed Nizamul Huq resigned for Skype Scandal between the justice and Ahmed Ziauddin that compromised the fairness of the tribunal were revealed on YouTube and in publications such as The Economist and Amar Desh. Elsewhere in the media, Bergman has criticised the due process procedures of the International Crimes Tribunal as flawed. He has been critical of the tribunal's due process and principles in following rule of law. Bangladesh's tribunal raised a further contempt charge against Bergman in April 2014 concerning three articles he had published on his blog about the court. At issue is his writings about how many people died during the Bangladesh Liberation War with the court using the official figure of three million and Bergman saying that number is disputed by evidence.

Bergman has often appeared on the Al Jazeera show Inside Story as a political commentator on Bangladesh.

In February 2021, Bergman appeared in the Al Jazeera documentary All the Prime Minister's Men which exposed corruption allegations against the Bangladesh Army's 16th chief of staff Aziz Ahmed. The army chief allegedly arranged presidential pardons for his brothers who have been fugitives from Bangladeshi law with convictions for murder and other crimes. The Bangladeshi government statement in response to the documentary mentioned Bergman, Jamaat and said that it "regrets that Al Jazeera has allowed itself to become an instrument for their malicious political designs aimed at destabilizing the secular democratic Government of Bangladesh". Shahidul Alam, writing in the New Age, advised the government to not slip on a banana peel.

Blog and other writing Bergman runs a personal blog called Bangladesh Politico. BRAC, the London School of Economics, the Biden administration, the United Nations, Amnesty International India, the British High Commissioner to Bangladesh, the European Union Ambassador to Bangladesh, Tulip Siddiq, Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and the British Labour Party.

Works Bergman, David. "The sabotage theory and the legal strategy of Union Carbide," New Law Journal, 138, 17 June 1988. Bergman, David. (Director) "War Crimes Files" (documentary), Dispatches (program), Channel 4. 1995.