Son tried his best to save Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, says Home Minister Kamal

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal has said that both war criminals, Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mohammed Mujahid, had appealed for presidential clemency under Article 49 of the Constitution.

"Their families are denying it, but they both appealed for clemency," Kamal told reporters at his office on Sunday. "But they explored all possible alternatives to save the two war criminals."

He said Salauddin Quader's son Hummam Quader 'ran from pillar to post' to save his father. "He tried his best to stall the hangings."

Law Minister Anisul Huq told the media on Saturday that both Salauddin Quader and Mujahid had sought presidential clemency.

That was the only option left for them after the Supreme Court upheld their death sentences.

But both families denied that clemency had been sought and said that neither Salauddin Quader nor Mujahid had appealed for a presidential pardon.

After meeting his father for the last time hours before the execution, Hummam told journalists outside the Dhaka Central Jail that his father had not sought clemency. “I asked him ‘Did you file a mercy petition?’. His reply was ‘Who said that kind of rubbish?’.”

He reiterated it on Sunday while speaking to reporters in Chittagong after his father’s burial. "When I spoke to him yesterday, he said, ‘Your 6-foot 2-inch tall father is a tiger; he can’t bow before anyone’.”

When the media referred to Hummam’s statement, the home minister replied: “If he had not sought clemency, why would we move on it? Why did we have to go to several ministries if a mercy petition had not been filed?”

Kamal said that they had assumed the death-row convicts would not go for clemency.

“But both Mujahid and Salauddin Quader’s petitions mentioned Article 49,” said the home minister.

Article 49 of the Constitution reads, “The President shall have power to grant pardons, reprieves and respites and to remit, suspend or commute any sentence passed by any court, tribunal or other authority.”

Kamal said that the President had turned down their pleas.

Replying a query over the families raising doubts over it, he said, “They may not have been aware of it. The petitions were sent to us. They were not supposed to know.”

The home minister said that the government has evidence of the two convicts seeking clemency. “We have the petitions written by them with us.”

Kamal said that he believes that people will not respond to the Jamaat-e-Islami's strike call to protest Mujahid’s execution.