The verdict on Jamaat-e-Islami leader and former al-Badr man Kamaruzzaman’s appeal against his death sentence for war crimes committed during the 1971 Liberation War will be pronounced today.
The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court enlisted the Jamaat senior assistant secretary general’s appeal as the first task in today’s cause list.
The four-member court comprising Justice Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, Justice Md Abdul Wahhab Miah, Justice Hasan Foez Siddique and Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury will pronounce the verdict.
On concluding hearing on the appeal on September 17, the bench kept the appeal waiting for verdict.
Kamaruzzaman was an al-Badr leader in 1971. He was also a top leader of the greater Mymensingh Islami Chhatra Sangha, the then student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, and was also the office secretary of East Pakistan Islami Chhatra Sangha.
The second International Crimes Tribunal framed seven charges against him but the prosecution was able to prove five.
On May 9 last year, the tribunal found him guilty of mass killing, murder, abduction, torture, rape, persecution, and abatement of torture in greater the Mymensingh area in 1971.
Of the five charges, he was sentenced to death in two charges, life imprisonment in two other charges and 10 years’ imprisonment in one.
The tribunal said while delivering verdict: “We are convinced from the evidence, oral and documentary, led by the prosecution and the sourced documents, that the accused [Kamaruzzaman] at the relevant time had acted as an atrocious and potential leader of al-Badr to the actual accomplishment of the crimes charged and beyond.”
The tribunal verdict also termed al-Badr an auxiliary force of the Pakistani army that killed three million Bangalees, raped around a quarter of a million women, forced 10 million Bangalees to take refuge in India and displaced innumerable people inside Bangladesh during the nine-month-long war.
On June 6, Kamaruzzaman’s lawyers filed an appeal petition, challenging the tribunal verdict.
