SC allows govt, war criminals to file review petition

The Supreme Court has allowed both the government and condemned war criminals to file review petitions against the Appellate Division verdicts 15 days into receiving its certified copy.

The SC decision has erased the debate which was surfaced after war criminal Abdul Quader Mollah was executed on December 12 last year following its verdict.

Exercising its inherent power, the apex court allowed the both sides to file review petitions, the court said in its full judgement on Mollah’s review petition against his death sentence.

The SC judgment was published in its website today after five judges of the bench have signed it, sources said.

The five judges of the appellate division bench are Chief Justice Md Muzammel Hossain, Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, Justice Md Abdul Wahhab Miah, Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain and Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury Manik.

Jamaat-e-Islami leader Quader Mollah, a key ally of the Pakistani occupation force, was given life-term imprisonment by International Crimes Tribunal-2 on February 5 last year for his wartime offences.

The Appellate Division on September 17 last year sentenced him to death for his crimes responding to appeals against a trial court verdict.

The state counsel then claimed that there is no scope for the condemned war criminals to move any review petition before the SC against its judgments in any war crimes case.

While the defence counsel had said the convicts have the right to move such review petitions.

Mollah was executed on December 12 after the SC had rejected his review petition.

The SC had rejected the review petition as it did not find any error in the judgment on his appeal challenging Mollah’s death penalty, the full verdict said.