SC defers hearing of death penalty review plea by war criminal Mir Quaesem Ali to Aug 24

A hearing on war crimes convict Mir Quasem Ali’s petition seeking a review of his death sentence has been deferred.

The Supreme Court, accepting a defence plea for time, gave the postponement order on Monday.

A five-member appeals bench led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha fixed the next hearing on Aug 24.

“We sought two months but the court granted a month,” chief defence counsel Khandker Mahbub Hossain said after Monday’s hearing.

The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in its verdict had cited the crimes against humanity Quasem had committed as the Chittagong area commander of the Al-Badr.

The militia, comprising members of the Islami Chhatra Sangha, had been formed to help the Pakistan Army during the Liberation War of 1971.

Quasem, founding president of the Islami Chhatra Shibir, has been a member of the Jamaat's Central Executive Council and the organisation’s fifth most important leader.

The ICT found Mir Quasem guilty and sentenced him to death in 2014 for the killing of young freedom-fighter Jashim Uddin Ahmed and eight others.

He challenged the verdict but the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in March this year.

On June 19, he filed a petition for a review of the top court's verdict.

He had been in the Kashimpur prison, in Gazipur, since his arrest in 2012 but was later shifted to the Dhaka Central Jail.

If the review verdict upholds the death sentence, Quasem will have the scope to seek presidential clemency.

But if the Jamaat leader is denied pardon, the government will be free to order his hanging.

Mir Quasem was the Al-Badr’s third most important functionary after Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami and Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid.

Both Nizami and Mujahid have been executed for their 1971 war crimes.

Mir Quasem, a terror in Chittagong during 1971, later proved to be a shrewd businessman and politician.

The 63-year-old media tycoon pumped billions into Jamaat coffers since the mid-1980s to make it financially strong in Bangladesh.