Mojaheed appeals to SC

Jamaat-e-Islami leader Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed filed an appeal with the Supreme Court yesterday challenging the death penalty awarded to him for his crimes against humanity during the Liberation War.
The International Crimes Tribunal-2 on July 17 found the 65-year-old Jamaat secretary general guilty of five out of seven charges brought against him. The court sentenced him to death in connection with three charges, jailed him for life in one and sentenced him to five years in prison in another charge.
Tajul Islam and some other pro-Jamaat lawyers submitted a 95-page appeal along with 3,800 pages of documents on behalf of Mojaheed seeking his acquittal.
In the appeal, Mojaheed mentioned 115 grounds for which he should be acquitted.
After filing the appeal, Tajul told reporters that the verdict against his client was “not actually a judgement in the eye of the law”. There was no element of charges of crimes against humanity and genocide brought against Mojaheed, Tajul argued.
The investigation officer did not find information of any case filed with any of the country's police stations against Mojaheed for committing crimes against humanity during the war in 1971, he added.
Tajul also said the investigation officer could not find any information of Mojaheed's involvement in any auxiliary force like Al-Badr, Razakar, Al-Shams, and the Peace Committee, but the tribunal had addressed him as an Al-Badr commander.
Additional Attorney General and chief coordinator of the prosecution MK Rahman told The Daily Star that they were to decide about filing an appeal seeking death penalty for Mojaheed for the two other charges in which the convict was sentenced to imprisonment.
According to the verdict, Mojaheed had led a “death squad” named Al-Badr that worked as an auxiliary force for the Pakistani army.
He had held superior responsibility in abetting, planning and facilitating the mass killings of the “best sons and daughters of the soil”.
In 1971, Mojaheed was a top leader of Islami Chhatra Sangha, the then student wing of Jamaat. Chhatra Sangha turned into Al-Badr, an armed outfit, the tribunal said.
Mojaheed was made a technocrat minister during the BNP-Jamaat-led four-party alliance rule in 2001-2006.