Cyber Tribunal defers delivering judgment on SQ Chowdhury war crimes verdict leak case

A special court has deferred the passing of its judgment on the case over the leak of Salauddin Quader Chowdhury’ war crimes verdict by two weeks.

The Bangladesh Cyber Tribunal was scheduled to deliver a verdict on Sunday, but Judge KM Shamsul Islam fixed Aug 28.

“It has been deferred as the judge is yet to finish writing verdict,” the court’s bench-clerk Shamim Ahmed told bdnews24.com.

On Aug 4, the court concluded the trial after hearing closing statements from the prosecution and defence before fixing Sunday for delivering its verdict.

Former BNP MP from Chittagong, Salauddin Chowdhury was executed in November last year for crimes against humanity during Bangladesh’s Liberation War.

His wife Farhat Quader Chowdhury, son Hummam and four others accused pleaded not guilty to the charges in court. Another accused is absconding.

Apart from Farhat and Hummam, the other accused are Salauddin Quader’s lawyer Fakhrul Islam and manager Mahbubul Ahsan, Mehedi Hasan, a staff to lawyer Islam, and two International Crimes Tribunal employees Nayan Ali and Faruk Hossain.

After concluding the trial on Aug 4, a warrant was issued for Hummam as he did not appear before the court.

It also scrapped bails for the other suspects, except for Farhat and sent them to jail.l.

Defence lawyer Aminul Gani Tito claimed that Hummam was whisked away by men claiming themselves to be from the Detective Branch as soon as his car arrived the court premises.

The Dhaka metro police, however, said that Hummam was not with them.

On Oct 1, 2013, Salauddin Quader was handed down the death sentence by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT).

But before the verdict was announced, the BNP leader’s wife and other members of the family had showed ‘copies of the verdict’ to journalists, claiming they had found them on the internet.

Amid a furore, the ICT admitted that the draft of the verdict had indeed been leaked and the tribunal registrar had started the case with police.

Police had pressed charges against the seven in August 2014.

The two ICT employees accused in the case and Salauddin's lawyer Fakhrul Islam were arrested in 2014.

The High Court in December last year granted Islam bail in the case.

The two ICT staffers had confessed to court that they were involved in the leaking of the tribunal verdict.

Salauddin Quader had moved the Supreme Court challenging his death sentence. But the Appellate Division upheld his punishment.

He was hanged on Nov 21 last year after the top appeals court also threw out his petition to review the death penalty.