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BANGLADESH: WAR TRIBUNAL GIVES DEATH SENTENCE IN FIRST RULING
January 21, 2013: A Bangladesh war crimes tribunal sentenced a former leader of the country’s largest Islamic party to death, its first conviction for offenses carried out four decades ago during the independence struggle with Pakistan.
Abul Kalam Azad, an ex-member of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was today found guilty of rape and murder. The verdict was handed down in absentia in Dhaka by Justice Obaidul Hassan as the 66-year-old Azad is yet to be detained.
“We have no way to appeal against the verdict as the convict is a fugitive,” Abdus Shukur Khan, a state-appointed counsel for Azad, said in a phone interview. “If we want to take the case to the higher court, the convict has to be present in court and file an appeal.”
The International Crimes Tribunal was set up in 2010 by the government led by Sheikh Mujib’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, after it began to investigate alleged war criminals from the conflict that killed three million people. Opposition parties have called it politically motivated.
Azad aided the Pakistani army in committing criminal acts and atrocities including murder, abduction, torture and rape in Faridpur, a district in central Bangladesh, during the war, according to a trial document sent to reporters by the tribunal.
Azad was charged with involvement in the killing of at least 12 unarmed people and raping of two Hindu women in Faridpur in 1971, the document shows. Twenty-two prosecution witnesses, including victims and victims’ families, testified against Azad. (Sources: bloomberg.com, 21/01/2013)
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