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Judgment Leak

At least 20 had access to draft verdict

Ashutosh Sarkar
At least 20 tribunal staff members had access to the computers of the judges of a war crimes tribunal, where the draft verdict against BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury was composed.
They include two computer operators, a few officials and several lower grade employees, and any of them could have leaked the draft through pen drive or any other portable device during its composition, a top official of the tribunal told The
Daily Star yesterday.
The tribunal has yet to ascertain who might have been involved in leaking parts of the judgment.
The leaked portion, however, did not contain the sentence against Salauddin, which was written by the judges immediately before delivering the verdict on Tuesday morning, the official said.
The three judges of International Crimes Tribunal-1, including its Chairman Justice ATM Fazle Kabir, had separately written
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parts of the verdict, and two computer operators composed them, he added.
The two other judges are Justice Jahangir Hossain and Justice Anwarul Haque.
According to the official, the tribunal chairman and one of its members. Justice Jahangir, have two computer operators - a male and a female.
Once the compiling was done, the three judges collectively finalised the verdict, he added, requesting anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter.
The two computers on which the draft judgment had been composed have now been seized as detectives opened an investigation into the incident yesterday, said sources in the police.
The tribunal authorities have already "unofficially" interrogated the computer operators and several staff, the official said, adding that it was too early to name a suspect.
The official has strictly maintained that there is no possibility of leaking the draft judgment from the judges' computers by any outsider other than the staff of the well-secured premises.
The building is secured by 24-hour police surveillance and no one can enter the building without a pass issued by the tribunal registrar's office, he added.
The leak came as an embarrassment for the tribunal, he said, adding that the culprit(s) might have done it for money.
Meanwhile, I CT-2 Chairman Justice Obaidul Hassan and its members Justice Md Mozibur Rahman Miah and Justice Md Shahinur Islam met the judges of ICT-1 at Justice Fazle Kabir's office to discuss the incident.
Tribunal sources said the judges had taken the incident seriously and spoke of taking stern action against those involved in the theft.
AKM Nasiruddin Mahmud, registrar of the tribunal, told this correspondent that law enforcers were working to identify the perpetra tor(s).
The whole thing was done to discredit the trial process and mislead people about the war crimes trial, he added.
Soon after the verdict, Salauddin Quader Chowdhury's wife, Farhat Quader Chowdhury, claimed to newsmen that she had already had the copy of the judgment, saying it had been retrieved from the computer of the law secretary and that it had been written by the law ministry.
During the pronouncement of the judgment, Salauddin himself made similar claims. Certain quarters had been making identical claims on the social media since the night before the verdict.
The law minister, the state minister and the law
secretary have all dismissed the claims as baseless.
Asked if the law ministry would also investigate the leak, its Secretary ASSM Zahirul Haque replied in the negative yesterday.
He also ruled out again the possibility of the verdict being leaked from the ministry, and said the ministry had no scope for involvement with the verdict.
A 164-page document, which did not contain observations or the pronouncing of the sentence, was found on different websites on Monday night with claims that it was the leaked verdict.
The original judgment is a 172-page document.
The ICT-1 on Tuesday sentenced Salauddin Quader Chowdhury to death for committing crimes against humanity and genocide during the country's Liberation War in 1971.