Dhaka: A special Bangladeshi tribunal on Thursday issued death warrants against a top leader of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party convicted of crimes against humanity during the country’s independence war against Pakistan in 1971, clearing the way for his execution.
The three-bench International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has issued the death warrant for Mohammad Kamaruzzaman.
Tribunal’s Acting Deputy Registrar Mohammad Aftab Uddin Ahmed took it to the Dhaka Central Jail. Prosecutor Zead-Al-Malum said the government would have to go ahead with the process to hang the convicted Jamaat leader.
“The process will be postponed if the Supreme Court asks to do so”. The process to execute the death verdict of the Jamaat leader will start after the prison officers read out the warrant to Kamaruzzaman. The warrant will also be sent to the Home Ministry and district magistrate. Jamaat Assistant Secretary General Kamaruzzaman can file a review petition within 15 days from the publication of the full verdict yesterday.
The review petition, if the defence files within the stipulated time, would put the process to execution on hold, Law Minister Anisul Huq said.
A four-member bench of the Appellate Division on November 3 last year upheld the International Crimes Tribunal’s verdict sentencing Kamaruzzaman to death for killing 120 people at the Sohagpur village in 1971.
Since Bangladesh launched the war crimes trial, the two special tribunals, set up by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s secular government in 2010, have handed down death penalties to 13 people.
Only one of them, Jamaat’s joint secretary general Abdul Quader Mollah so far has been executed to far. About three million people were killed by the Pakistani army and their Bengali-speaking collaborators during the liberation war when Jamaat was opposed to Bangladesh’s independence siding with the Pakistani junta.
On Wednesday another top leader of Jamaat was sentenced to death for war crimes, triggering violence outside the court premises. (PTI)
