Zafrullah Chowdhury, a veteran freedom fighter on Wednesday said that he would file an appeal against the verdict of International Crimes Tribunal- 2 that had awarded him one hour jail and fined Tk 5,000 in a contempt of court charge.
After serving the one-hour imprisonment, Zafrullah said he would not give the fine as he would file an appeal to a higher court against the verdict.
‘I did not contempt the court,’ he claimed and added that the tribunal could not prove any evidence of contempt against him.
‘I simply criticised the system of keeping standing during pronouncing the verdict,’ he said.
Earlier this morning, ICT- 2 awarded Zafrullah Chowdhury, one hour jail and fined Tk 5,000, in default one month of imprisonment, in a contempt charge because of issuing statement over a verdict against journalist David Bergman.
The tribunal also exonerated 22 others eminent citizens after warning them of taking serious caution as they were found guilty for the first time. Zafrullah Chowdhury got the punishment as the court found him guilty of contempt of court for the second time.
The tribunal on May 14 had set Wednesday to pass its order regarding the contempt proceedings against 23 eminent citizens who issued a joint statement criticising ICT’s token punishment awarded to journalist David Bergman for contempt of the tribunal.
The 23 respondents were among the 49 citizens who signed the joint statement on December 18, 2014 which Prothom Alo published on December 20, 2014 and did not offer apology despite the tribunal had given them chance to offer apology.
The rest 26 were exonerated earlier from contempt proceedings as they offered ‘unconditional’ and ‘unqualified’ apologies. On December 2, 2014, the tribunal handed Bergman the ‘sentence of simple imprisonment till rising of the court with a fine of Tk 5,000’ on charge of contempt of the tribunal for using ‘derogatory and unfair words and phrases’ about a tribunal judgement in two articles posted on his blog.
Source: New Age