Prosecution seeks death penalty for 4
The prosecution yesterday completed arguments and sought capital punishment for four Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) activists in Prof Humayun Azad murder case.
The accused are: Salehin alias Salahuddin, Anwarul Alam alias Anwar, Mizanur Rahman alias Minhaz and Nur Mohammad. Salehin and Nur are on the run while the remaining two are in jail.
During the closing arguments, advocate Md Shaiful Islam, public prosecutor of the case, told the court they were able to prove the charges against all the accused.
Judge Maksuda Parvin of the Fourth Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge's Court of Dhaka then set January 24 for defense lawyers' arguments.
Earlier, the court recorded statements of 42 prosecution witnesses including the complainant of the case.
On February 27, 2004, JMB activists stabbed the 56-year-old linguist and writer while he was trying to catch a rickshaw to go home from the Ekushey book fair at Bangla Academy in the capital.
After the attack, Azad was treated at Combined Military Hospital for 26 days.
Then the government sent him to Bangkok for better treatment from where he returned home on recovery after over 47 days.
A day after the killing attempt, Azad's brother Manjur Kabir filed an attempted murder case with Ramna Police Station against some unnamed people.
Dr Azad, a professor of Dhaka University's Bangla department, died from what an autopsy said was a heart attack in Munich on August 12, 2004.
The investigation officer, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Inspector Kazi Abdul Malek, submitted a charge sheet on November 15, 2007 accusing JMB leaders Anwar, Mizanur and Nur.
JMB leaders Shaekh Abdur Rahman and Ataur Rahman Sunny were dropped from the charge sheet as they were executed following a Supreme Court verdict for killing two judges of Jhalakathi on November 14 of 2005.
On April 30, 2012, CID again pressed charges against the five and appealed for the case to be converted into a murder case.
During the investigation, Mizanur gave a confessional statement before a magistrate. Hafiz Mahmud alias Hassan, another accused in the case, was later killed in a gunfight with police after he fled from a prison van in Gazipur.
The court framed charges against the accused on September 10 of 2011.
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