The International Crimes Tribunal may deliver verdict in the war crimes case against absconding BNP leader Zahid Hossain alias KhokonRazakar any day.
After both prosecution and defence finished placing arguments yesterday, the first tribunal passed the order keeping the case CAV, meaning “verdict would be delivered later.”
Khokon’s counsel MdAbdusShukur – appointed by the state because he had been absconding – said his client had been a victim of mistaken identity. He tried to place that his client and the accused were not the same person and the investigation officer had failed to finish the probe properly.
Prosecutor Mokhlesur Rahman Badal concluded his part of the arguments seeking death sentence for Khokon, claiming that all charges against the accused had been proven beyond doubt.
Badal told the tribunal that the relatives of the victims of Kokhon’s crimes had been forced to dump the bodies of their loved ones in mass graves without performing last rites, out of fear of the accused and his cohorts. Even children, women and elderly people were not spared KhokonRazakar’s brutality.
Khokonis facing 11 charges for murder, genocide, arson, rape, loot and forcing religious conversion. The first tribunal has so far pronounced verdicts against Jamaat leaders GhulamAzam and Delwar Hossain Sayeede, and BNP leader SalauddinQuader Chowdhury.
Khokon was indicted on October 9, 2013 in absentia.
The prosecution placed a total of 24 witness including the investigation officer, who told the court that the accused was a member of the Razakarforce during the first days of the Liberation War. He became the commander of RazakarBahiniin Nagarkanda of Faridpurafter his elder brother Zafar died in a confrontation with the freedom fighters.
The defence on the other handsubmitted 30 names as their witnesses but could not produce any of them before the court.
In December last year, prosecution confirmed that Khokonhad been living in Sweden’s Stockholm with his Daughter Shamsun Nahar Begum and Son-in-Law Mohammed Bodiuzzaman Shaikh.
Meanwhile, the same Tribunal set May 11 for beginning final arguments in the war crimes case against Mobarak Hossain, an alleged Razakar commander of Brahmanbaria during the Liberation War in 1971, by closing defence witness.
The three-member tribunal, led by Justice M Enayetur Rahim, passed the order as defence failed to produce its third witness despite deferring date twice.
