The prosecution, on Sunday, examined the seventh prosecution witness against Jamaat-e-Islami leader Motiur Rahman Nizami at the International Crimes Tribunal-1 (ICT-1) and declared him as “hostile” with the tribunal’s permission. Pradip Kumar Dev gave his deposition before the three-member tribunal, headed by its chairman justice ATM Fazle Kabir, as the seventh prosecution witness. After the deposition, Pradip said he could not say if he had given any statement against the accused to the investigating officer.
During the cross-examination, he said, “I can’t say if I had given deposition to the investigating officer, Abdur Razzaq Khan, by mentioning the names of Motiur Rahman Nizami and Al Badr commander Rafiqun Nabi on November 6, 2010.”
In reply to a question from the prosecutor, Mir Iqbal Hossain, the witness claimed that he was not hiding the truth under influence exerted by the defence. When Iqbal told the witness that he was giving false deposition, the tribunal asked the prosecutor to refrain from such course of questioning. “You cannot say the witness is giving false deposition. There are some tactics for cross-examination to pull out the truth and determine if the witness is lying,” the tribunal told the prosecutor.
Iqbal then urged the tribunal to mention the witness as “hostile”. As no other prosecution witness was present to testify before the court, the tribunal fixed May 19 for the next hearing.
Meanwhile, the ICT-2 passed an order upon the ICT registrar to publish advertisements, asking the two expatriate war crime suspects, Chowdhury Mueen Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman Khan, to appear before the tribunal. The tribunal, chaired by justice Obaidul Hassan, directed the registrar to take necessary steps to publish the advertisement within 10 days in at least two newspapers — one Bangla and the other English.
The decision was taken in response to a petition from prosecutor advocate Zead Al Malum, who told the tribunal that law-enforcers were unable to execute the tribunal’s arrest warrant against the duo. The tribunal set May 22 to pass the next order.
-With The Independent input
