Supreme Court upholds Jamaat leader’s death‏

DHAKA, Nov. 3 (NsNewsWire) — A Supreme Court bench has upheld the death penalty to Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party leader Muhammad Kamaruzzaman for crimes against humanity in 1971.
A four-member bench of the Supreme Court (SC) bench headed by Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha delivered the verdict on Monday morning upholding the death of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party leader by majority view.
The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT)-2 in May last year awarded death sentence to the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islmai party’s Assistant Secretary General Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, who is now behind the bar.
Sources said Kamaruzzaman’s execution now depends on the release of the full text of the SC verdict.
Defense lawyer said they will file a review petition with the SC.
“We’ll file the review petition within 30 days after getting the certified copy of the verdict,” said Shishir Monir, a counsel for Kamaruzzaman, told journalists.
But Bangladeshi Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told reporters that there will be no scope to file a review petition.
“What I personally think that there will be no scope for review.”
Five of the seven charges leveled against him had been proven while two were partially proven, SC bench announced while delivering the verdict.
Kamaruzzaman was indicted in June 2012 with seven charges of crimes against humanity including looting, mass killings, arson, rape and forcefully converting people into Muslims during the war.
The indictment order, in a brief profile of the accused, said Kamaruzzaman was a key organizer of the Al-Badr, an auxiliary force of then Pakistani army which planned and executed the killing of Bangalee intellectuals at the fag end of the Liberation War in 1971.
Security has been beefed up across Dhaka, specially at key points of the city as Jamaat enforced dawn-to-dusk hartal for the second consecutive day in protest against death sentence awarded to its Chief Motiur Rahman Nizami last week.
The SC verdict also came a day after the ICT-2 pronounced the verdict Sunday afternoon on a crime against humanity case, awarding death sentence to the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islmai party’s central executive committee member Mir Quasem Ali.