Barrister Fakrul Islam Chowdhury, the main lawyer of convicted war criminal Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, was arrested Wednesday afternoon from his office.
He was arrested from the capital’s Kakrail area allegedly in connection with the leakage of a verdict of the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT).
Detective Brancch (DB) of Police arrested him at around 3:30pm in connection with the verdict leakage, around 50 days after the incident, Masudur Rahman Deputy Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP-Media) said.
“Barrister Fakrul has been taken to the DB headquarters at Minto Road,” he said. “He will be produced before the court tomorrow (Thursday).”
DB official sources said Barrister Fakrul Islam Chowdhury has been arrested after his direct involvement was found in the process of leaking the verdict, although his junior lawyer Mehedi Hasan, who allegedly played the key role in the leakage, remains on the run.
A DB official said they arrested barrister Fakrul through verification of information extracted from two detained ICT employees.
“Barrister Fakrul was informed of every development regarding the process of the leakage of the verdict,” said a DB official. “Even the verdict was stolen at his directives.”
Krishnapada Roy, DC of DB (South), who led the arrest, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We are trying to arrest Mehedi Hasan, a junior to Barrister Fakrul Islam Chowdhury, who has been on the run since the verdict was leaked.”
Asked, the DC-DB (South) said they were trying to locate the whereabouts of fugitive Mehedi.
The ICT on October 2 sentenced SQ Chowdhury to death for committing crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971.
But night before the verdict, a major portion of the verdict was found available on various online portals.
Two days after the verdict’s leak, on October 2, DB personnel arrested two ICT employees – Nayan Ali and Mohammad Faruq — who admitted to stealing the verdict’s copy using a USB drive from a personal computer at the ICT-1 offices and supplying it to Barrister Fakrul’s apprentice Mehedi Hasan.
Sources say the ICT employees stole the verdict’s copy for a sum of money after being provoked by Fakrul’s lawyer.
DB officials on November 5 also filed a case accusing Nayan, Faruq, and Mehedi by name and also against several unnamed others and raided the office of Fakkrul’s chamber and seized various documents related to the verdict’s leak.
The computer from which the verdict’s copy was stolen was designated to the tribunal chairman, Justice ATM Fazle Kabir. Detained Nayan Ali also had access to the computer.
On November 5, Monirul Islam, Joint Commissioner of DB, said the leaked copy of the verdict was uploaded online from the UK where it was sent through emails.
