Mojaheed, SQ Chy to file pleas today
War criminals Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and Salauddin Quader Chowdhury will appeal to the Supreme Court today to review its judgments upholding their capital punishment for the crimes committed during the 1971 war for independence.
The review petitions were almost ready, said Khandker Mahbub Hossain, principal counsel for both the convicts, yesterday.
The defence would seek reconsideration of the judgments on the grounds that their clients had been sentenced to death on the basis of false and fabricated testimonies of the prosecution witnesses, he said.
If the witnesses' statements are properly examined, their death penalty will be scrapped, the defence counsel claimed, saying that the death sentence now is not acceptable worldwide as punishment.
The Apex Court upheld the capital punishment of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mojaheed and BNP leader Salauddin in June and July this year after hearing their appeals against the verdicts of the war crimes tribunal.
On September 30, it released the full verdicts in the cases against Mojaheed and Salauddin, leaving them with one legal option -- seeking review of the judgments.
Meanwhile, five lawyers met Mojaheed at the Dhaka central jail yesterday afternoon to consult him about the filing of his review petition.
Shishir Manir, who led the lawyers, told The Daily Star Mojaheed expressed the hope that the SC would consider his review petition and that he would be acquitted of the war crimes charges brought against him because of what the Jamaat leader said was that he had not been involved in any such offence.
The International Crimes Tribunal issued execution warrants for the duo on October 1.
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