Jamaat leader Kamaruzzaman worse than Nazis, says appeal verdict

The Appellate Division has observed that the war crimes Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mohammad Kamaruzzaman had committed during Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971 were worse than those perpetrated by hanged war criminal Abdul Quader Molla and even by Nazis during the Second World War.

“The acts of the accused (Kamaruzzaman) can be comparable with none but beasts,” the division said in its verdict in the appeal against the death penalty that the International Crimes Tribunal had awarded to him for crimes against humanity.

The final verdict mentioned that Kamaruzzaman did not repent for his criminal acts at any stage of the proceedings. That is why he ‘deserves no sympathies’, it said.

The Supreme Court released the full verdict on Wednesday, around three and a half months after a four-member Appellate Division bench on Nov 3 upheld the death sentence verdict.

Justice SK Sinha, now the chief justice, who heads the bench, wrote the main part of the verdict.

He had also written the appeal verdict in the war crimes cases against another Jamaat leader Molla, who got his life-term revised to death sentence and was hanged in December 2013.

The ICT awarded death penalty to Kamaruzzaman, who led the Al Badr in Mymensingh during the 1971 war, on May 9, 2013.

The Appellate Division upheld the ICT verdict unanimously for killing 120 people at Sohagpur village under Sherpur district.

The verdict said ‘all the males of the village’ were brutally killed.

“He was directly involved in the implementation of the killing and rape... The incidents were so cruel, inhuman and barbarous that the perpetrators not only killed almost all the male members of the village, they also did not spare the widows of the victims, who were also ravished,” it said.

“Even the women who fled away sensing the enormity of the crime and returned back 2-3 days after the incidents in their houses were also not spared.”

The verdict said while narrating the horrific killing of her husband and causing violence to her after the killing, prosecution witness 12 suffered convulsive gasps under mental distress.

Muhammad Kamaruzzaman

“She could not control her emotion even after 40 years. How gruesome incident it was? None can imagine other than the one who has experienced the traumatic incidents.”

It said Kamaruzzaman directly participated in the barbarous acts. “These acts are comparable with none. Even Nazis did not perpetrate similar nature of brutal acts.”

No sympathy for the 'beast’

The verdict said the acts of the accused in the formation of Al-Badr and then his involvement in the participation of the mass killing and rape of the widows of Sohagpur village were inhuman and gruesome.

“We find no difference between the conduct of a man and a beast in these crimes,” it said.

The verdict said: “It has been revealed from the documentary evidence and oral evidence, which described the gruesome manner of killing as a scene resembling that of the Hindu spring festival, ‘the Holy’, where the crowd is immersed in red coloured water.

“The accused and his force killed one by one the villagers and this killing spree continued for six hours. It was bath by blood. The killing spree was such as if they were hunting birds and animals.”

Read the full report in Bangla here