Security not an issue for them now
Defence counsels went to Dhaka Central Jail yesterday to meet death row war crimes convict Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, ignoring the “security issues” they had been citing as reasons for their absence from the trial proceedings on hartal days.
In 2012 and last year, senior defence lawyers did not attend the two international crimes tribunals on hartal days, even after repeated assurances from the courts that they would be provided with necessary protection.
On several occasions, the tribunals imposed fines on them but they continued remaining absent, delaying the court procedures.
However, lawyers of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Kamaruzzaman went to meet him in jail in an ambulance braving the hartal that was called by the party itself in protest at the capital punishment of another party leader Mir Quasem Ali for his crimes against humanity during the Liberation War.
They said they went there to know what their client wanted them to do in the next course of action after the Supreme Court upheld his death penalty awarded by the war crimes tribunal.
Motiur Rahman Akand, one of the four counsels who met Kamaruzzaman, told The Daily Star that they went to the jail in “an emergency situation.”
The ally of the BNP-led opposition enforced consecutive hartals since October 30, excluding the weekends and Tuesday for Ashura, protesting the recent verdicts in war crimes cases against its leaders.
During the hartal hours on Wednesday, the Daily Star correspondent saw Khandaker Mahbub Hossain, another counsel of Kamaruzzaman, leave the Supreme Court premises in an ambulance after a press briefing on the SC verdict.
Counsels of war crimes accused Jamaat leaders invariably stayed off the cases' hearings on hartal days before the January 5 election.
The prosecution lawyers termed it “dilatory tactics” to drag the long-awaited trial in what they said was an effort to get advantage of the event of a change of government.
The defence counsels discontinued the practice after the national election.
Several counsels of Jamaat leader Abdus Subhan participated in the proceedings of the International Crimes Tribunal-2 yesterday.
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