Verdict on Bangladesh Jamaat key financier's death sentence on March 8

Bangladesh's supreme court on March 8 will deliver its verdict on the petition filed by an influential leader of Bangladesh's largest Islamist party who was sentenced to death in 2014 for war crimes including mass killings.

A four-member bench of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court (SC) headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha Wednesday set the date after hearing arguments from both the prosecution and the defence.

Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-2) in November 2014 on a crime against humanity case awarded death sentence to the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islmai party's Jamaat central executive committee member Mir Quasem Ali, who is now behind the bar.

The defense for Ali had later filed the appeal to the apex court challenging the tribunal's verdict.

During hearing arguments, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam prayed to the apex court to uphold death penalty for the 64-year-old key financier of Jamaat.

However, Khandker Mahbub Hossain, chief defence counsel for the war criminal, prayed to the apex court for acquittal of his client saying that the state counsels failed to prove the charges.

Ali was indicted in 2012 with 14 charges of crimes against humanity, including looting, mass killings, arson, rape and forcefully converting people into Muslims during the war.

Eight of the 14 charges leveled against him had been proven while two were partially proven, ICT-2 announced while delivering the verdict.

In June 2014 he was arrested from the offices of his newspaper Naya Diganta, a leading Bengali daily, shortly after the tribunal issued a warrant for his arrest.

So far three Jamaat leaders -- Abdul Quader Molla, Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, have been executed.

Apart from them, ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury was executed in November 2015. Endit