Jamaat calls daylong hartal for today to protest execution move
Sanowara Jahan, wife of Quader Mollah, flashes the V-sign as she reaches Dhaka Central Jail to visit her husband apparently for the last time last night. Photo: courtesy
In a dramatic decision last night, the chamber judge of the Supreme Court stayed the execution of Abdul Quader Mollah just a couple of hours before the war crimes convict was to hang.
The decision came after the counsels for the Jamaat-e-Islami leader rushed to the residences of the SC chamber judge and the attorney general with a petition for halting the execution.
Mollah’s lawyers Khandaker Mahbub Hossain, Abdur Razzaq and Tajul Islam went to Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain’s residence at the Judges’ Complex in the capital’s Kakrail around 8:30pm.
But the judge asked them to give a copy of the petition to Attorney General Mahbubey Alam for placing the arguments.
The defence lawyers then went to Alam’s Minto Road residence around 9:00pm, but he wasn’t there. They also failed to contact Alam over the mobile phone.
Mollah had shown the same sign on February 5, when he was sentenced to life. Photo: file
Then the lawyers went back to the chamber judge’s residence, and stayed there till 9:20pm.
In the petition, the counsels for Mollah, condemned to death for crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War, said the government had made the preparations to execute Mollah without completing all legal procedures.
Earlier, two defence lawyers met Mollah at the Dhaka Central Jail at 10:10am. The Jamaat leader asked them to file the review petition.
Mollah’s counsels on several occasions said their client has the right to seek review against the Supreme Court verdict since International Crimes Tribunal-2 sent the death warrant to the jail authorities on December 8.
Talking to The Daily Star in the evening, State Minister for Law Qamrul Islam said Mollah’s lawyers were spreading confusion despite knowing that the constitution doesn’t allow him to file a review petition, since he was convicted and sentenced to death for committing crimes against humanity.
The provisions of the Jail Code will not be applicable for Mollah, as he was tried under the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, 1973, he said.
Talking to the reporters at his official Minto Road residence, he said Mollah had only one way to avoid punishment– president’s clemency, but “he [Mollah] had said he would not apply for the president’s clemency in presence of two executive magistrates.”
Things changed quickly in the evening when the jail authority asked Mollah’s family members to meet him at 8:00pm, giving rise to speculations that he would be hanged after midnight.
Mollah’s 23 family members went to the prison around 8:00 in two vehicles — a white microbus and a blue jeep – and had a 40-minute meeting with him.
As the news spread, his party men unleashed violence in Satkhira and other parts of the country.
Source: The Daily Star