Judgment any day
The Supreme Court could deliver its verdict on the appeal filed by condemned war criminal Jamaat-e-Islami leader Muhammad Kamaruzzaman any day.
A four-member bench of the Appellate Division led by Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha yesterday kept the appeal waiting for verdict after hearing arguments on it for 16 days.
Three other judges of the bench are Justice Md Abdul Wahhab Miah, Justice Hasan Foez Siddique and Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury Manik.
On May 9 last year, International Crimes Tribunal-2 had sentenced Kamaruzzaman, one of the key organisers of the infamous Al Badr force, to death for committing crimes against humanity during the country's Liberation War.
The Jamaat-e-Islami senior assistant secretary general was found guilty of mass killing, murder, abduction, torture, rape, persecution, and abetment of torture in greater Mymensingh district during the Liberation War in 1971.
Kamaruzzaman submitted his appeal to the apex court on June 6 last year challenging the tribunal judgment, and also seeking acquittal on the charges brought against him.
During the hearing, defence counsel SM Shahjahan told the apex court that the Tribunal-2 had convicted and sentenced Kamaruzzaman on false and baseless documents and evidence, and that he should be acquitted of all charges.
The Tribunal-2 had convicted Kamaruzzaman relying upon hearsay statements of prosecution witnesses, although they were not reliable and did not corroborate, he argued.
At one stage of the hearing, SM Shahjahan told the court that the proceedings of the case had ended well, although Kamaruzzaman did not get a better lawyer than him.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam vehemently opposed the appeal of Kamaruzzaman and prayed to the Appellate Division to affirm the Tribunal-2 verdict that sentenced him to death, saying all the charges against the Jamaat leader were proved beyond reasonable doubt.
The Tribunal-2 had handed down the death sentence to Kamaruzzaman in two criminal charges.
One of the charges reads Kamaruzzaman on July 25, 1971, advised members of Al-Badr and Razakar forces to commit a large-scale massacre in association with the Pakistan army troops in Sohagpur village of Nalitabari upazila in Sherpur. The collaborators murdered 164 unarmed civilians, 44 of whom have been named, and raped many women.
So many men had been killed that Sohagpur later became known as Bidhoba Palli, village of widows.
On August 23, 1971, on Kamaruzzaman's instructions, collaborators took Golam Mostafa of Gridda Narayanpur village in Sherpur to an Al-Badr camp. The Jamaat leader and his accomplices brought Mostafa and Abul Kasem to Serih Bridge and gunned them down.
Kasem survived as he jumped into the river but suffered injuries to his fingers. Mostafa died on the spot, according to another charge.
The Tribunal had also given life imprisonment to Kamaruzzaman in two charges and 10 years' imprisonment in one charge and acquitted him of any wrongdoing in two charges.
Comments