War crimes convict Abdul Quader Molla, also an assistant secretary general of Jamaat-e-Islami, was hanged Thursday night at Dhaka Central Jail amid heightened security.
The jail authorities executed Quader, convicted of committing crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War, after the government ordered it to execute his death warrant without applying the jail code. Sheikh Yusuf Harun, deputy ommissioner of Dhaka confirmed the execution.
Molla was executed around 10:00pm after the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in a full-court hearing turned down a petition which had sought review of the court’s earlier judgment sentencing Quader Molla to death for an offence involving the killing of six members of a family at the outset of the country’s independence war.
In a packed courtroom amid tight security, a five-member Appellate Division bench comprising the same judges who had originally imposed the death sentence, rejected Quader’s petition without giving any reasons.
Supreme Court registrar AKM Shamsul Islam told New Age that he had notified the respective government authorities, including the inspector general of prisons, about the Appellate Division’s rejection of the two review petitions, and it was later reported that the order had been sent to Dhaka Central Jail.
Attorney general Mahbubey Alam had told reporters around noon that the Appellate Division’s decision had cleared the way for Quader’s execution and that there could be no more legal intervention. He said that Quader might rethink whether he wanted to seek presidential mercy which he had refused when the jail authorities had twice asked him if he would do so.
Quader’s chief counsel Abdur Razzaq said he was aggrieved and thought that Molla was denied justice.
He said that Quader Molla should not be executed until the Appellate Division released the full text of its order as the apex court had dismissed his applications in just a few words.
On Wednesday, the Appellate Division bench, headed by the chief justice, Md Muzammel Hossain, had heard arguments from the Attorney General on why the applications filed under article 105 of the constitution should not be heard by the court – with Razzak strenuously arguing that the court had the power to do so.
At the beginning of the hearing on Thursday, the court told Razzaq that he should continue as though there was no dispute on the maintainability of the review petition, and should argue on the merits of the application.
Turning to the substantive arguments in favour of the defence application, Razzaq argued that there was ‘error apparent on the face of the record’ in the way in which the Appellate Division had failed to take into account contradictory statements made by Momena Begum – the sole witness in the charge for which Molla was sentenced to death.
He argued that the rules of the International Crimes Tribunal had allowed the defence to question a witness on issues of credibility, and this included inconsistencies between evidence a witness had given in court and a statement which the same person had given to an investigation officer or to another person.
Although Momena had told the tribunal that Molla was present at the time of the murder of her family, she had not mentioned this in her statement to the investigation officer and instead named another person.
She had also given another statement to a researcher based at a 1971 museum in which she said that she was not even present at the time of the murder of her family.
The court had said in its judgment that the defence could only cross-examine a witness in relation to evidence which that person
had given in her examination in chief – and not in relation to statements that they had previously given.
Razzaq also argued that Bangladesh law required that a court could only increase the sentence if it was ‘manifestly inadequate and unusually lenient’. He, however, argued that the judgment had failed to show how the sentence of life imprisonment – where ‘life meant life’ – given by the International Crimes Tribunal was so inadequate.
‘There is no finding in the judgment that the sentence was manifestly inadequate,’ he said.
At one point in the argument, the chief defence lawyer wanted to refer to the judgment of the dissenting judge, but Justice Md Abdul Wahhab Miah said, ‘Please do not refer me. It is a great embarrassment for me. I felt embarrassed.’
Outside of the review application, Razzaq also argued that to ‘ensure complete justice’ when deciding what orders it gave the Appellate Division should take into consideration the illegality of the warrant of execution and the application of the jail code.
In relation to the jail code, he argued that it applied to Molla and that, assuming the court were to reject the review application, he should be given 15 days to decide whether or not to seek a pardon from the president.
He said that the ICT Act stated that the sentence should ‘be carried out in accordance with the orders of the government’ and this referred to the jail code.
Razzaq also argued that the execution warrant sent to Dhaka Central Jail was ‘defective’ as it should not have been signed by the International Crimes Tribunal but by the Appellate Division which had handed down the death sentence.
On this point Justice SK Sinha said, ‘We asked the ICT to do so.’
Attorny general Mahbubey Alam gave only a short reply to the arguments, stating that it was clear that the tribunal rules only allowed limited cross-examination of a witness by the defence.
He also argued that a written statement of the investigation officer was not an ‘evidence’ as defined in the ICT rules.
The Appellate Division on September 17 sentenced Quader Molla to death on a government appeal following a judgment given by the International Crimes Tribunal on February 5 that had sentenced him to life in prison.
The five-member Appellate Division bench delivered a majority verdict of four judges to one.
The tribunal issued the death warrant after the full text of the appeal verdict had reached the tribunal from the Supreme Court on Sunday. The Supreme Court had released the full text on December 5.
The appeals court sentenced Quader to death for killing six members of the family of Momena Begum at Mirpur in Dhaka on March 26, 1971, the offence for which he had earlier been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Quader Molla along with his cohorts is said to have surrounded the house of Momena’s father Hazarat Ali Laskar, killed her parents, her minor brother and three younger sisters and raped one of them.
The tribunal verdict that was delivered on February 5 triggered a youth uprising at Shahbagh Square in Dhaka that spread across the country, with thousands demanding that he should be hanged for his crimes.
Amid such protests, the government on February 18 amended the law to allow the state to appeal against inadequacy of a tribunal sentence.
The tribunal had acquitted Quader Molla of one count, sentenced him to life in prison on two counts and to varying terms of imprisonment on three other counts.
The appeals court sentenced him to death on one of the counts for which he had earlier been jailed for life.
The chief war crimes prosecutor, Golam Arief Tipoo, on March 3 filed an appeal against the ‘inadequacy of the sentence’ of Quader on five charges and against his acquittal of the other charge.
Quader filed his appeal petition the next day seeking to be acquitted of all the charges.
On Tuesday, the government had ordered the jail authorities to execute Quader one minute past midnight.
However, at 10:20 that night, the Appellate Division chamber judge Syed Mahmud Hossain, stayed the execution until the next morning in response to a legal intervention by Molla’s defence lawyers.
A total of 23 family members met Quader after the government had decided to execute him one minute after midnight past Tuesday. Later the jail authorities suspended Quader’s execution following the Appellate Division order.
Of the petitions, one was filed for overturning the death sentence and other over legality of its judgment that had handed him death sentence reversing the tribunal’s February 5 verdict awarding him life term.
Courtesy of New Age
