Cyber Tribunal again defers judgment on Salauddin Quader war crimes verdict leak case

The delivery of judgment in the case over the leak of the war crimes verdict has been deferred again by more than two weeks.

Court Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 28 August 2016, 08:32 AM
Updated : 28 August 2016, 09:55 AM

The Bangladesh Cyber Tribunal was scheduled to deliver the verdict on Sunday, but Judge KM Shamsul Islam set Sep 15 to pronounce it.

The judgment was deferred as ‘the judge was yet to finish writing the verdict’.

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.

Apart from Farhat and Hummam, the other accused in the case under the ICT Act 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.

Mehedi is still absconding.

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

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

Defence lawyer Aminul Gani Tito claimed that Hummam was whisked away by men claiming to be from the Detective Branch as soon as his car arrived in 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 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 in court that they were involved in the leaking of the tribunal verdict.

The Cyber Tribunal indicted the seven on Feb 15. Witness deposition started on Mar 28.

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.​​