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Bangladesh war crime convict files review petition

Xinhua, March 5, 2015 Adjust font size:

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party leader Muhammad Kamaruzzaman has filed a review petition with the country's apex court against its verdict that upheld his death penalty for war crimes in 1971.

His counsel Shishir Munir filed the review petition on Thursday.

In his review petition Kamaruzzaman made a plea to the apex court to scrap his conviction and acquit him of charges, his counsel Manir told journalists.

He said the apex court will now fix a date for hearing the review petition.

Bangladesh's war crimes tribunal on Feb. 19 issued a warrant of execution for Kamaruzzaman shortly after receiving the full text of the Supreme Court verdict that upheld the death penalty of Kamaruzzaman, assistant secretary general of Bangladesh Jamaat, for his crimes against humanity during 1971.

Kamaruzzaman was indicted in June 2012 with seven charges of crimes against humanity including looting, mass killings, arson, rape and forcefully converting people into Muslims during the war.

The tribunal found the Jamaat leader guilty of collaborating with Pakistani forces and committing war crimes including mass killings.

Bangladesh on Dec. 12 last year executed Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Molla, convicted of war crimes in 1971.

The death sentence of the war crimes accused Molla, assistant secretary general of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami Party, was executed hours after the Appellate Division dismissed his plea to review the SC verdict that confirmed the capital punishment on Sept. 17 in 2013.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh was called East Pakistan until 1971. The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said about 3 million people were killed in the war although independent researchers think between 300,000 and 500,000 died.

After returning to power in January 2009, Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, established the first tribunal in March 2010, almost forty years after the 1971 fight for independence from Pakistan, to castigate those committed crimes against humanity during the nine-month war.

Apart from Jamaat, ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the country's largest opposition party, has also dismissed the court as a government "show trial" and said it is a domestic set-up without the oversight or involvement of the United Nations.

But the ruling Bangladesh Awami League party denied the calls of BNP and Jamaat, saying they are creating anarchic situation in the name of political programs aimed at foiling the ongoing war crimes trial. Endi