Hearing date to be fixed Sunday

The Supreme Court will fix Sunday a date to begin hearing the appeals filed by the government and Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Mollah against a war crimes trial verdict.
A five-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice Md Muzammel Hossain yesterday fixed the date after hearing a government petition filed on Monday for setting a date for hearing the appeals.
The court authorities on Monday listed the government's appeal as item-27 in yesterday's hearing list of the apex court.
Yesterday, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam, however, prayed to the court to fix a date on Sunday for hearing the appeals as defence counsels were not present in the court.
On February 5, the International Crimes Tribunal-2 had sentenced Mollah to life imprisonment for committing crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971.
The government on Sunday appealed to the court seeking death penalty to Mollah for each of the six charges he faced at Tribunal-2.
The tribunal convicted the 65-year-old on five wartime criminal offences out of six he was charged with.
Meanwhile, Mollah on Monday filed an appeal with the apex court seeking acquittal in the crimes against humanity case filed against him.
The Appellate Division would have to dispose of the appeals within 60 days of their filing.
The tribunal awarded Mollah life sentence (30 years) for two of the five acts of crimes against humanity in which at least 350 Bangalees were killed and a girl was raped.
He also got 15 years' imprisonment for complicity in three other criminal offences in which six people were killed.
He was acquitted of the sixth charge of killing hundreds of people at Keraniganj during the Liberation War.
The government appeal also sought Mollah's death penalty on the above charge.