A war crimes tribunal is set to deliver the verdict today in the case against alleged al-Badr leader ATM Azharul Islam for committing crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War in the Rangpur area where over 1,200 people, mostly Hindus, had been killed.
The International Crimes Tribunal 1 led by Chairman Justice Enayetur Rahim fixed the date yesterday.
The 62-year-old Jamaat-e-Islami assistant secretary general is facing six charges including abduction, confinement, murder, genocide, looting and arson.
An alleged al-Badr commander of Rangpur, Azhar was the former president of the Rangpur district unit Islami Chhatra Sangha, the then student wing of the Jamaat.
Son of late Nazir Hossain and Ramicha Khatun of Batasan Lohanipara in Badarganj upazila of Rangpur, Azhar was a student of class XI at the Rangpur Carmichael College during the war.
Police arrested him on August 22, 2012 from his Moghbazar house in the capital after the tribunal had issued an arrest warrant against him.
The tribunal indicted him on November 12 last year.
A total of 19 witnesses testified against the accused. Of them, the prosecution declared their seventh witness hostile. The defence produced a relative of Azhar to testify in his favour.
After recording the closing arguments of both prosecution and defence, the tribunal on September 18 kept the case for a verdict.
During the arguments, the prosecution sought death penalty for the offences Azhar had committed including the Jharuar Beel massacre of April 17, 1971 when 1,200 unarmed people had been killed.
Azhar was also allegedly involved in the abduction and murder of four Hindu teachers of Carmichael College and others on April 30, according to a charge.
The prosecution pleaded for compensation to a victim of sexual torture. The victim testified at the tribunal as the first prosecution witness. She was confined at the Rangpur Town Hall camp and raped for 19 days resulting in the miscarriage of her baby.
Terming the Town Hall of Rangpur a “rape camp,” the prosecution said it was one of the many camps that had been raised and run by the anti-liberation forces in 1971. Azhar helped the Pakistani occupation forces to abduct and confine women in that camp, who were later treated as sex slaves.
“The person, who can facilitate such crimes in a rape camp, cannot be called anything other than an animal,” prosecutor Tureen Afroz said.
On the other hand, defence lawyer Abdus Sobhan Tarafder claimed that there had been no evidence of “conspiracy,” “instigation” and “planning” against his client in March 1971. “On March 24, 1971, Bangladesh was not born and an 18/19 year old boy cannot hatch any kind of conspiracy with the Pakistani Army commanders in the cantonment.”
