BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir speaks at a rally at Suhrawardy Udyan in the capital on Thursday.
The main opposition BNP Thursday urged the government to halt the execution of death sentence awarded to its lawmaker Salauddin Quader Chowdhury until an investigation going on into the leakage of the verdict ends.
“There is no way to execute the verdict since the investigation is still going on,” the party’s standing committee member Barrister Rafiqul Islam Mia said at a rally at Suhrawardy Udyan in the capital.
BNP’s Dhaka city unit organised the rally as part of the countrywide demonstrations protesting the government plan and bid to what the party said “destroy all state institutions”.
International Crimes Tribunal-1 on Tuesday awarded the death penalty to SQ Chowdhury for committing crimes against humanity and genocide during the 1971 Liberation War.
The programme was announced the next day following claims by Chowdhury’s family and counsels that the verdict which the ICT-1 delivered was drafted by the law ministry and available on different websites.
The tribunal confirmed Wednesday that an organised vested group had leaked parts of “the draft of the verdict” and uploaded that on the internet to make the war crimes trial controversial.
Addressing the rally Thursday, BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir alleged there are many in inconsistencies in the verdict and hoped that Chowdhury would get justice form higher court.
He also said that SQ Chowdhury trial was part of the government’s well-thought-out plan to eliminate its political opponents.
Source: The Daily Star
