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Hearing on Bangladesh war crime convict's review petition set for April 1

Xinhua, March 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party leader Muhammad Kamaruzzaman's review hearing will be held on April 1.

The Appellate Division full bench led by Chief Justice SK Sinha fixed the date on Monday.

His counsel Shishir Manir filed the review petition against his death penalty for war crimes 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.

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 in 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, 2013 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 Supreme Court 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 believe 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. Endi