SC to hear Kamaruzzaman’s review plea Apr 1

The Supreme Court today fixed April 1 for hearing a petition filed by condemned war criminal Muhammad Kamaruzzaman seeking a review of its verdict that upheld his death penalty.

A four-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice SK Sinha fixed the date after hearing another petition filed by the senior assistant secretary general of Jamaat, seeking a four-week adjournment of the hearing.

While talking to The Daily Star in the morning, Kamaruzzaman's lawyer Mohammad Shishir Manir said the process of executing his client will remain halted until the apex court disposes of the review petition.

The time petition was submitted to the SC yesterday on grounds that Kamaruzzaman's principal counsel Khandker Mahbub Hossain was "unable to conduct the hearing of the review petition due to unavoidable circumstances and personal difficulties", according to the defence.

Justice Hasan Foez Siddique, the chamber judge, yesterday sent the review petition to the full bench following a petition filed by the government on March 5 praying to the SC for hearing and disposing of the review petition of Kamaruzzaman.

Kamaruzzaman filed the 45-page review petition with the apex court on March 5 for scraping his conviction and acquitting him of the charges, according to the defence.

Earlier on February 19, the prison authorities read out the death warrant to Kamaruzzaman after the International Crimes Tribunal-2 had issued it the same day. The SC released the verdict's full text the previous day.

On November 3 last year, the SC upheld the death penalty handed down to Kamaruzzaman by the tribunal on May 9, 2013 for his crimes against humanity during the Liberation War.

The 63-year-old Jamaat leader was found guilty of mass killing, murder, abduction, torture, rape, persecution and abetment of torture in greater Mymensingh in 1971.