All eyes are set on the Supreme Court which delivers today the verdict on the appeal filed by war criminal Motiur Rahman Nizami challenging his death penalty.
A four-member SC bench headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha is scheduled to sit at 9:00am and pronounce the judgement at the beginning of today’s court proceedings.
This is the sixth time the Appellate Division is going to deliver a verdict on an appeal against a war crimes tribunal’s judgement.
The three other judges of the bench are Justice Nazmun Ara Sultana, Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain and Justice Hasan Foez Siddique.
Earlier on December 8 last year, a four-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by the chief justice fixed today’s date after hearing Nizami’s appeal for 11 days.
Both the state and the defence expressed the hope that the judgement would come in their favour.
Talking to The Daily Star yesterday, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam said he hoped the SC would uphold the International Crimes Tribunnal-1 verdict that sentenced Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Motiur Rahman Nizami to death for committing crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971.
On the other side, Khandker Mahbub Hossain, principal counsel for Nizami, has recently told this correspondent that he expects acquittal of his client.
“I have placed arguments on behalf of my client before the court. Now, the court will decide about acquittal of my client,” he said.
On the last and 11th day of the hearing, Mahbub Hossain urged the SC to acquit his client of all the charges brought against him.
He also prayed to the court to commute the death sentence of the 75-year-old to life term even if the apex court found him guilty of committing wartime offences.
Attorney General Mahbubey Alam has meanwhile prayed to the SC to uphold the death penalty of Nizami, saying the Jamaat chief had instigated war crimes, including killing of intellectuals, through delivering speeches and writing articles on newspapers.
The Tribunal-1 on October 29, 2014 awarded Nizami the capital punishment on four charges of war crimes, including the killing of the intellectuals.
The SC may also fix today a date for hearing the appeal of another war crimes convict Mir Quasem Ali.
The apex court was scheduled yesterday to fix the date but did not do it as a conducting lawyer for Quasem Ali was not present before it.
The court yesterday asked Quasem Ali’s advocate-on-record Zainul Abedin Tuhin to take steps so that a conducting lawyer remains present at the court today.
Quasem, a member of Jamaat-e-Islami central executive council, filed the appeal with the SC challenging the verdict delivered by the International Crimes Tribunal-2 on November 2, 2014.
The tribunal sentenced Quasem to death after finding him guilty on 10 charges of abducting, confining and torturing people during the War.
