Mir Quasem appeals against death penalty

Convicted war criminal and Jamaat leader Mir Quasem Ali has challenged his death penalty awarded by the International War Crimes Tribunal-2.

Mir Quasem yesterday submitted a 150-page appeal before the Supreme Court, seeking his acquittal of all the 10 charges on which he was found guilty. He also attached 1,600 pages of documents with the appeal.

In the petition, the Jamaat-e-Islami leader mentioned 181 “reasons” why the apex court should consider acquitting him of all war crime charges.

On November 2, the tribunal sentenced Quasem to death after it had found him guilty in 10 of the 14 charges against him.

Citing the petition, Quasem's lawyer Shishir Monir said the tribunal has wrongly convicted and sentenced Quasem to death as the court “failed to properly examine the documents and evidence submitted by the Jamaat leader”.

The ICT-2 judgment on Quasem should be scrapped, he claimed.

The SC will later fix a date for hearing the appeal, the lawyer said.