Nizami’s appeal hearing may end by Dec 15: AG

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam today expressed hopes that the Supreme Court hearing on the appeal of war criminal Motiur Rahman Nizami against his death penalty will be completed by December 15.

Otherwise, the court will have to finish it in January as the apex court will go to a 20-day vacation from December 16, the attorney general said while talking to reporters at his office this afternoon.

Earlier on November 23 last year, Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami challenged the death penalty awarded to him by a war crimes tribunal for his crimes against humanity committed during the Liberation War in 1971.

International Crimes Tribunal-1 on October 29, 2014 handed him the death penalty on four charges of war crimes, including murdering intellectuals. The 71-year-old was also awarded life term imprisonment on the other four charges.

In his appeal Nizami mentioned that the tribunal had failed to consider that he was never associated with any auxiliary force controlled by Pakistan army in 1971, Shishir Manir, a lawyer for Nizami, told The Daily Star last year.