War crimes: Quasem seeks another deferral of review hearing
Convicted war criminal Mir Quasem Ali today filed another petition with the Supreme Court seeking three-week deferment of hearing his review petition against the judgement that upheld his death penalty.
A five-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha is scheduled to start hearing the review petition tomorrow.
Khandker Mahbub Hossain, the principal defence counsel for Quasem, told The Daily Star that the adjournment petition was filed as he could not take preparation for moving the review petition before the apex court due to missing of Barrister Mir Ahmmad Bin Quasem, son of Quasem Ali.
Mir Ahmmad Bin Quasem, who was an assistant lawyer for this case, had kept all the records and documents of the case to his custody, he said.
Khandker Mahbub said the SC may hold a hearing on the adjournment petition tomorrow.
Earlier on July 24, Quasem Ali had filed a petition with the SC seeking two-month deferment of hearing his review petition for Khandker Mahbub’s taking preparation.
The Appellate Division on July 25 deferred the hearing and fixed August 24 for holding the hearing of the petition.
On June 19, Quasem submitted the petition to the apex court through his lawyers seeking review of its verdict that had upheld his death penalty for the crimes he committed during the Liberation War in 1971.
In the petition, the Jamaat-e-Islami leader prayed to the SC to acquit him of all seven charges on which he was found guilty.
The International Crimes Tribunal on June 6 issued a death warrant against Quasem Ali hours after the SC had released the full text of its verdict upholding his death penalty.
On November 2, 2014, the ICT-2 handed down capital punishment on the 63-year-old Jamaat leader, who was the chief of anti-liberation force Al-Badr in Chittagong, for committing crimes against humanity.
On March 8 this year, the Appellate Division upheld the ICT-2 verdict.
Quasem is considered by many as the main financier of the anti-liberation party. He allegedly paid $25 million to an American lobbyist firm to carry out a smear campaign to make the war crimes trial controversial, the then law minister Shafique Ahmed told parliament on April 28, 2013.
The death row war criminal was shifted to the Dhaka Central Jail from Kashimpur prison in Gazipur on June 20 this year.
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