GD over alleged verdict leak

A General Diary (GD) has been filed over the reported leak of war crimes convict Salauddin Quader Chowdhury's verdict before it was delivered in court.

Staff Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 2 Oct 2013, 08:49 AM
Updated : 2 Oct 2013, 12:36 PM

The International Crimes Tribunal Registrar Nasir Uddin Mahmud said the draft might have been leaked from the tribunal's computer.

The GD, filed with the Shahbagh police on Wednesday, said all the verdicts by the war crimes tribunal were drafted in its offices.

It said there was no chance of the copies being leaked before being delivered in court.

"There's no chance of publication of parts of the verdict before its announcement," read the copy of GD filed by the tribunal.

"It is, however, a matter of concern how parts of the said draft verdict were circulated on the Internet or how parts of the said verdict supposedly leaked from the tribunal," it added.

BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury was found guilty of wartime atrocities and was sentenced to death on Tuesday by the first war crimes tribunal of Bangladesh.

Before the judgment, social media sites were rife with rumours that the verdict had been 'leaked'.

After the verdict, social media claimed that the announced verdict had fully matched the ‘leaked one’.

Salauddin Quader's family and lawyers had made a similar claim on Tuesday.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam had trashed turned down the claims and said the tribunal was looking into the allegation.

The Registrar has requested police to investigate the matter and take legal action.

He said: "The supposed draft verdict has a slight similarity with the verdict delivered [by the tribunal].

"It is, however, not a verdict that was prepared to be delivered formally," he said.

According to him, the verdict delivered by the tribunal mentions section numbers but the reported leaked copy does not contain such details.

"It is merely a draft which might have been leaked days before the verdict."

Justice Jahangir Hossain of Bangladesh's first war crimes tribunal has alleged the leak claim was a conspiracy to undermine the tribunal and its judges.

As the ICT-1 was delivering its verdict on Tuesday, Salauddin Quader stood up in the dock and said: “No need to read all these. These have been available online over the past two days.”

His wife Farhat Quader Chowdhury claimed they had found the verdict on a website a day before the tribunal's verdict and produced a copy of it.

In its GD, the tribunal said parts of the reported leaked verdict had been uploaded at www.tribunalleaks.be

The published 'verdict' on the site is 165-page long while the tribunal's verdict stretches over 172 pages.

It also did not mention conviction or punishment, while the main verdict talks of evidence, conviction and punishment against each charge.