ICT explains death penalty

In an historic verdict the second war crimes tribunal of Bangladesh sentenced one to death for genocide and murder during the 1971 Liberation War.

Expelled as a full member of Jamaat-e-Islami and popular as a television show host on Islam, Abul Kalam Azad was found guilty of seven charges and acquitted in one.

The three-judge International Crimes Tribunal – 2, set up in March 2012 to expedite war crimes trials, found Azad, also known as Bachchu Razakar in his native Faridpur, guilty of genocide in one charge and of murder in three others.

The court also found him guilty on three other charges of rape, abduction, confinement and torture.

ICT 2 chairman Justice Obaidul Hassan read out from the summary of his tribunal’s 112-page judgement which said that although Bachchu’s lesser crimes warranted imprisonment, the judges were unanimous in awarding  a single ‘sentence of death’ for his major crimes like murder.

“We have taken due notice of the intrinsic gravity of the offence of ‘genocide’ and murders as ‘crimes against humanity’ being offences which are particularly shocking to the conscience of mankind,” went the verdict.