Tanim Ahmed
Dhaka, May 2 (bdnews24.com) — Prosecutor Mohammad Ali was admonished for a second round, this time at the second war crimes tribunal, as he bumbled through the charges against Jamaat assistant secretary general Abdul Quader Molla.
Although his second time, Mohammad Ali failed to get the formal charges in proper order, as it still contained a number of errors. This time, however, he described how Meherunnesa, a poetess, was murdered in 1971.
The prosecutor had had a considerably hard time for not being able to find documentary evidence from during the war or immediately afterwards, as he had submitted a recent article to substantiate this charge.
Mohammad Shazzad Ali Chowdhury, a junior counsel for the defence, at one point stood up to object to the prosecutor correcting the errors orally as he placed the charges. He suggested that he prosecutor submit a formal application with all the corrections, so that senior counsels of the defence could respond appropriately.
The International Crimes Tribunal – 2, set up on Mar 23 this year to try crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War, is set to hear two petitions regarding Mohammad Ali filed in the light of his experience at the first tribunal, where he had already gone through the process once.
The prosecution proposed six charges against the Jamaat-e-Islami leader, dropping two from the previous list. Mohammad Ali said that charges 3 and 4 were only being placed for 'judicial notice'. The tribunal then clarified that those two were not being pressed.
Similar to the previous occasion when the tribunal chairman Justice A T M Fazle Kabir had expedited the lengthy charge hearing by asking prosecutor Rana Dasgupta to begin almost half way through the previous charges against former BNP MP Abdul Alim, Mohammad Ali was asked to begin reading from page 30 where the charges actually began.
However, the prosecutor landed in trouble soon after beginning to read from his volume as he began to introduce Quader Molla with his background.
The prosecutor said Molla was a leader of Jamaat's student wing Islami Chhatra Sangha in 1971, having joined the party in 1966. It was quite a turnaround since he joined the Sangha quitting the Chhatra Union, the Communist Party's student wing.
Molla was the president of the Dhaka University as well as Shahidulla Hall unit of the Jamaat student wing.
He then said that Molla was part of the central executive committee of the student front when its name was changed to Islami Chhatra Shibir in 1977.
Justice Obaidul Hassan asked, "How is that possible? Was [Molla] still a student?"
The prosecutor quickly corrected it saying, "No, my lord, it should be 1971."
He then continued to read that Molla was a central student leader in 1971 when the organisation's name was changed.
He went for a few more minutes before the tribunal chief, a former judge of the first tribunal, Justice Kabir stopped him. "If the name of this organisation was changed to Shibir in 1971, then your contention that Molla was a member of Sangha does not hold."
Another judge wondered aloud whether it was the prosecutor's contention that Sangha was renamed to Shibir in 1971.
Shishir Manir, a junior member of the defence team, stood up to correct the prosecutor and said, the year was actually 1977 when Sangha's name was changed.
The prosecutor, managed to say through his nervous stutter that it was indeed 1977 and he would correct it accordingly. "It should read that the organisation's name was changed in 1977 and I will deduct the latter part saying Molla was a central leader then."
Mohammad Ali's nervous response managed to elicit smiles from the judges too.
The tribunal came down on the prosecutor once again as he began going through the charges wondering why he had not prepared a 'synopsis' as prosecutor Dasgupta had done, outlining the charges along with relevant witnesses and documents the prosecution had submitted.
Justice Kabir: "Why didn't you prepare a list? Then you would not have to run around through your documents."
Prosecutor Ali: "I am in the process of preparing exactly that. I will submit it either this evening or tomorrow morning."
The prosecutor had gotten through to the second charge when he drew the tribunal's attention to another change of dates in the formal charge.
He said although the charge said it was Oct 1971, the date should be corrected to Mar 27.
Tribunal member Shahinur Islam, a former registrar of the tribunal also a former district judge, could not hold back. "It goes from October to March 27 in one go?"
The prosecutor said that it was mistake induced by a book that he had used as a source which also had the date wrong.
The junior counsel Shazzad objected at this point. Justice Kabir told the prosecutor to file a separate application outlining all the changes. "Otherwise we cannot merely write it out by hand. Do continue to read the charges as they are."
The tribunal also pointed out that it was not the tribunal's copies that had to be changed but also those of the defence.
The other petitions of the prosecutor praying to add an eighth charge to the list of seven charges and inclusion of additional witnesses will be heard on Thursday.
'Butcher' of Bengalis
Indictment hearing of Molla started on Mar 7 at ICT-1 with the prosecution presenting seven charges against him. It was later shifted to tribunal-2 on Apr 16 following a prosecution petition. Wednesday was the first day of its proceedings in the newly-formed tribunal.
A case was filed with Keraniganj police on Dec 17, 2007 against a number of Jamaat leaders including Molla for killing a person named 'Mostofa' during the Liberation War. Another case was filed against Molla with Pallabi police in 2008. He was arrested on July 13, 2010 for the second case.
The prosecution brought crimes against humanity charges including murder, rape and arson in its probe report placed at the tribunal on Nov 1. The court took it into cognisance on Dec 28.
The prosecution report said that the Jamaat leader operated in Mirpur and Mohammadpur areas of Dhaka during the Liberation War and started killing Bengalis from March 25 midnight, 1971. Local Biharis assisted Molla in his killing and he also took part in the genocide at Mirpur's Alokdi village and was named the 'butcher' for his atrocities.
During the war, Quader was widely known as a 'butcher' for his direct involvement in killing of Bengalis. In league with the Urdu-speaking Biharis and other non-Bengalis, he unleashed a killing spree even before the crackdown on Bengalis by Pakistani forces on the night of March 25, 1971, known as "Operation Searchlight".
Besides Quader, others already arrested on war crimes charges are former Jamaat-e-Islami chief Ghulam Azam, present Jamaat chief Matiur Rahman Nizami, secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, executive council member Delwar Hossain Sayedee, assistant secretary general Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, BNP's standing committee member and lawmaker Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, and former member of BNP founder Gen Ziaur Rahman's cabinet Abdul Alim.
Of the eight Jamaat and BNP leaders facing the charges, only Alim is out on conditional bail.
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