Kamaruzzaman lawyers don’t want haste in review disposal

Convicted war criminal Mohammad Kamaruzzaman’s lawyers have said they do not want the review petition on the death penalty awarded to the Jamaat leader to be heard in haste.

Suliman NiloySuliman Niloybdnews24.com
Published : 5 March 2015, 04:27 PM
Updated : 6 April 2015, 01:41 PM

The Jamaat-e-Islami leader’s lawyer Joynal Amin Tuhin filed the review petition just after 11am on Thursday, the 14th day since the International Crimes Tribunal issued the death warrant.
 
The petition was recorded just after 1pm.
 
Before submitting the petition, Kamaruzzaman’s lawyers Khandaker Mahbub Hossain, Tajul Islam and Shishir Monir held a press conference on the review petition.
 
Khandaker, also the SCBA president and the adviser to BNP chief Khaleda Zia, said: “Thousands of cases are pending. Many cases in which death penalties had been awarded are also pending.”
 
“There is no compulsion for prompt disposal of the review petition here,” he added.
 

Khandaker hoped the court would not be in a hurry to dispose of Kamaruzzaman’s plea.
“Tension is prevailing in the country. We the lawyers cannot stay home at night. Many are worried,” he said.
In another press conference, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam said the verdict on convicted war criminal Abdul Quader Molla, who has been already hanged, had suggested prompt disposal of review petitions.
He said: “It is said there (in the verdict) that it’s not an appeal. It’s not a matter for re-hearing. This (review) provision is there so that the court can rectify if it had made any mistake.”
“No law provides for review. Only verdict provides for it. The same verdict says it (review petition) has to be disposed of promptly,” he added.

Kamaruzzaman had been sentenced to death by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT)-2 in May 2013 after it found him guilty of five of the seven charges levelled against him by the prosecution.
 
He was the acting president of the Islami Chhatra Sangha in Mymensingh in 1971 and ‘chief organiser’ of the Al Badr in the region during the 1971 Liberation War.
 
Vigilante militia Al Badr had been formed to help the Pakistan army thwart Bangladesh’s freedom struggle, the court observed.
 
Kamaruzzaman was awarded death on two charges - the murder of Golam Mostafa and the killing of 120 men and the raping of women at Sohagpur village at Sherpur’s Nalitabari on July 25, 1971.
 
The Appellate Division upheld his death sentence in its verdict in Nov, 2014. But it reduced the death sentence awarded for the murder of Golam Mostafa to life.

The three judges of the ICT-2 signed his death warrant on Feb 19 after the release of the Supreme Court’s full verdict. The death warrant was read out to Kamaruzzaman after it was sent to prison.