Witnesses hope Appellate Division will confirm death for war criminal Salauddin Quader Chowdhury

Several prosecution witnesses who testified against Salauddin Quader Chowdhury expect the Appellate Division to confirm death penalty for his war crimes.

They spoke to bdnews24.com on Tuesday, a day before the Appellate Division is scheduled to deliver the verdict on the appeal of the BNP leader, who hails from Chittagong.

Witness No. 2 M Salimullah, who was tortured at Chowdhury’s house Goods Hill in Chittagong City, said he thought the Appellate Division would uphold the maximum punishment for him.

He told bdnews24.com: “The murders and tortures he, his father Fazlul Quader Chowdhury and brothers had inflicted on freedom fighters and pro-liberation people can’t be expressed in words.”

Goods Hill at the Goni Bakery Intersection was turned a torture cell during the 1971 Liberation War.
 
Another witness Nizam Uddin Ahmed, a former journalist of Reuters news agency in Chittagong, said: “I and many more like me are awaiting the Supreme Court verdict.”
 
“All the relatives of those who were killed or tortured by Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and his family expect the Appellate Division will uphold the death penalty,” he added.
 
Ahmed said Chowdhury’s accomplices on July 5, 1971 had taken him to Goods Hill where he had been tortured and handed over to Pakistan the next day.
 
He was later freed from Chittagong jail.
 
Chowdhury was given five-year jail term for torturing Ahmed.
 
He said: “The nation is awaiting the Appellate Division verdict. Nothing short of (confirmation of) death penalty is expected.”
 
Bangladesh’s first Internationals Crimes Tribunal found Chowdhury guilty of nine among the 23 war crimes charges and condemned him to death on Oct 1, 2013. 
 
Witness Kazi Nurul Absar, a guerrilla fighter during the war, also expects the death penalty would be maintained in the Appellate Division.