The Supreme Court’s final verdict in war criminal Muhammad Kamaruzzaman’s appeal case has come as an overwhelming decision for the victims and justice seekers of the 1971 Liberation War as the apex court yesterday upheld a war tribunal’s death sentence to the key organiser of infamous killing squad al-Badr.
This comes only a month and a half after another verdict of the apex court that shocked the nation by reducing notorious war criminal Delawar Hossain Sayedee’s death sentence to imprisonment until natural death. In February 2012, the International Crimes Tribunal sentenced Jamaat leader Sayedee to death for the crimes he had committed against humanity in 1971.
“We are very happy to get justice, for which, we had to wait 43 long years,” Mohammad Jalaluddin, a victim of Kamaruzzaman’s war crimes at Sohagpur village in Sherpur, told the Dhaka Tribune over phone.
Sohagpur village has come to be widely known as the “Bidhoba Palli” or the village of widows, following a mass killing of 1971 when all men in the village were killed making all the married women widowed overnight.
Kamaruzzaman has been found guilty of that massacre for which the apex court also handed down capital punishment upholding the tribunal’s verdict.
On May 9 last year, the tribunal 2 in its verdict awarded death sentence to Kamaruzzaman for committing heinous crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War. He appealed against the judgement after a month.
Seventeen months after filing of the appeal, a four-member Appellate Division bench of the Supreme Court yesterday pronounced their judgement in a packed courtroom.
“I have always had faith in Allah that the culprit [Kamaruzzaman] must get punished some day for his offences,” said Jalal, who lost seven male members of his extended family including his father and an uncle in Sohagpur.
Jalal said the Pakistani Army had no idea about the village. “It was the local razakars and the al-Badr men who brought them to our village. Kamaruzzaman was their commander.”
He thanked Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for ensuring justice even after 43 long years of independence. Since 1971 the victims of Sohagpur village have been carrying colossal and unspeakable trauma.
Naturally, Kamaruzzaman’s lawyers and family members expressed disappointment over the verdict and said they would file a petition seeking review of the judgement. However, the attorney general said there was no scope of reviewing verdicts in war crimes appeal cases.
This debate is likely to be solved after the release of the full judgement, said some Supreme Court lawyers who gathered at the court to witness the delivery of the historic judgement yesterday.
Majority judges of the apex court bench found 62-year-old Kamaruzzaman, the senior assistant secretary general of Jamaat-e-Islami, guilty of mass killing, murder, abduction, torture, rape, persecution and abetment of torture in greater Mymensingh district in 1971.
Kamaruzzaman has been in the condemned cell of Kashimpur prison since the tribunal awarded him death sentence and he will remain there until implementation of execution, a prison official said.
Out of the seven charges brought against him, the tribunal found him guilty on five and acquitted on two charges. The Supreme Court found Kamaruzzaman guilty on four charges.
Of these four charges, the tribunal gave Kamaruzzaman death sentence on two charges – for the mass killing at Sohagpur and the abduction and killing of Golam Mostafa.
All the four judges of the Appellate Division bench also convicted Kamaruzzaman for the mass killing at Sohagpur village where more than 200 people had been killed and many women raped. But majority (three) judges awarded Kamaruzzaman death sentence for the mass killing.
Though the presiding judge of the bench, during pronouncement, did not say who gave descending punishment, later many lawyers in the court were seen talking among themselves on this issue.
They said Justice MA Wahhab Miah gave life-term imprisonment on this charge while Justice SK Sinha, Justice Hasan Foez Siddique and Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury gave capital punishment.
Meanwhile, the bench awarded the Jamaat leader life-term imprisonment (until death) for the abduction and killing of Golam Mostafa by majority – commuting the tribunal’s death sentence.
The apex court by majority upheld the tribunal’s sentences to Kamaruzzaman on two other charges – torturing Sherpur College’s Principal Hannan and killing Dara and five others.
The tribunal had given Kamaruzzaman 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment for torturing Hannan and life-term imprisonment for killing Dara.
The war tribunal also gave Kamaruzzaman life-term imprisonment on another charge – abduction, torture and killing of Badiuzzaman. But the Supreme Court judges acquitted him from the charge.
Kamaruzzaman’s one is the third appeals case verdict by the Appellate Division bench. In its maiden verdict, the court enhanced the punishment of another notorious war criminal Abdul Quader Molla. The Jamaat leader was awarded life-term imprisonment by the tribunal 2. Molla was executed in December last year.
On the other hand, top Jamaat leader Delawar Hossain Sayedee is serving his rigorous jail term until death in Kashimpur jail. He was given death penalty by the tribunal.
In 1971, Kamaruzzaman was a top leader of greater Mymensingh unit Islami Chhatra Sangha, then student wing of Jamaat. He was also the office secretary of East Pakistan unit Chhatra Sangha.
He played the role of a key organiser in the formation of al-Badr force with the selected students belonging to Chhatra Sangha. Infamous al-Badr was involved in killing Bangalees systematically and widely known for planned killing of the best brains of Bangalees to intellectually cripple the nation.
Al-Badr and other auxiliary forces also collaborated with the Pakistani occupation forces during the war for committing genocide mass killing, raping women, looting, destroying properties, forceful conversion of Hindus and deportation.
Several hundred people including lawyers, journalists, justice seekers and observers gathered on the Supreme Court premises yesterday morning amid Jamaat’s hartal.
The shutdown was called in protest against the tribunal’s death sentence to notorious al-Badr chief Motiur Rahman Nizami, now chief of Jamaat.
After Kamaruzzaman’s verdict, Jamaat called hartal again for tomorrow and Thursday.
The tribunal 2 judges – Chairman Obaidul Hassan, Justice Md Mozibur Rahman Miah and Justice Shahinur Islam in their full judgement said: “We deem it just and appropriate to pen our finding that the accused [Kamaruzzaman] was a perpetrator in white gloves who deserves the highest penalty.”
On the Sohagpur massacre, the tribunal said: “The fierceness of the event of the attack was launched in such grotesque and revolting manner in which the helpless victims, the unarmed hundreds of civilians, could not save their lives and honour.
“The act of massacre and devastation of human honour was diabolic and detrimental to basic humanness.”
Kamaruzzaman by his acts and conducts had participated to the perpetration of such horrendous attack that resulted in murder of hundreds of unarmed civilians constituting the offence of crimes against humanity, the tribunal verdict states.
It also observed that undeniably the act of indiscriminate sexual invasion committed on women, in conjunction of the event of mass killing at Sohagpur village, shocks the conscience of humankind and aggravates the pattern of the criminal acts and liability of Kamaruzzaman as well.
Three rape victims, who also lost their husbands in the Sohagpur massacre, standing on dock of the tribunal narrated the trauma and demanded justice for causing extreme dishonour and sexual invasion to them.
Death on two charges
On July 25, 1971, Kamaruzzaman advised members of al-Badr and razakar forces to commit a large-scale massacre in association with the Pakistani troops at Sohagpur village of Nalitabari in Sherpur. The collaborators murdered 164 unarmed civilians, 44 of whom have been named, and raped many women.
Life imprisonment on two charges
On August 23, 1971, on Kamaruzzaman’s instructions, collaborators took Golam Mostafa of Gridda Narayanpur village in Sherpur to an al-Badr camp. He and his accomplices brought Mostafa and one Abul Kasem to Serih Bridge and gunned them down.
Quasem survived jumping into the river but suffered injuries in his fingers. Mostafa died on the spot.
The tribunal in its order said Kamaruzzaman be convicted and condemned to a single sentence of death for these two crimes. “He be hanged by the neck till he is dead” as per the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act of 1973.
On Ramadan 27, Kamaruzzaman accompanied by 15-20 armed al-Badr members abducted one Tepa Mia and his elder son Zahurul Islam Dara from Golapjan Road in Mymensingh. They were taken to the al-Badr camp at District Council Bungalow.
The next morning, the father and the son along with five others were lined up and shot on the bank of the Brahmaputra River. Tepa Mia managed to escape by jumping into the river, but the six others were killed on the spot.
10 years on one charge
In mid-May, 1971, Kamaruzzaman and his accomplices inflicted inhumane torture on pro-liberation intellectual Syed Abdul Hannan, then principal of Sherpur College, by compelling him to walk naked through the town under constant whipping.