Repetitive quizzing by defence vexes court

For about two hours, a defence counsel asked almost similar questions to the investigation officer of the case against war crimes accused Syed Mohammad Qaisar yesterday, disappointing the International Crimes Tribunal-2.
Abdus Sobhan Tarafder asked questions like “how many statements of witnesses have you collected on September 25, 2012?”, “how many of those statements have you submitted to the chief prosecutor?”, “what were their names?”
The previous day, he asked questions over almost the same issues.
Pointing to the asking of similar questions over and over again, the tribunal judges termed such cross-examination a “waste of time.”
"What benefit would you get from it? You are wasting time. You have to complete [cross-examination] by tomorrow," said Justice Obaidul Hassan, chairman of the three-member tribunal.
“Have you ever seen any such question or answer in any of the judgements [by the tribunals]? Never....Little flaws in the investigation in such cases will not be taken into much consideration,” he said.
Monowara Begum, the investigator and the last prosecution witness in Qaisar's case, yesterday faced cross-examination for the third day, and the tribunal asked the defence lawyer, Tarafder, to complete the cross-examination by 1:00pm today.
Qaisar, the alleged founder of anti-liberation Qaisar Bahini, was a state minister of HM Ershad's regime.
Meanwhile, the tribunal completed recording the cross-examination of Md Shahidullah alias Shahid, the 21st prosecution witness in the case against Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdus Subhan. The proceeding was adjourned till August 6.