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Case completes all legal phases

Ashutosh Sarkar
With a Supreme Court bench hearing two review petitions, no legal phase has been left unexplored in the war crimes trial of Quader Mollah.
The defence filed one of the petitions with the chamber judge of the apex court on Tuesday night, seeking a review of the death penalty. The other one was filed yesterday morning against his life imprisonment.
The bench headed by Chief Justice Md Muzammel Hossain rejected both the petitions yesterday, clearing the legal bar to Mollah's execution.
Earlier on September 17, this bench sentenced Mollah to death, overrulingthe life term handed down by International Crimes Tribunal-2.
After being sentenced to life on February 5, the Jamaat leader walked out of court, flashing a V-sign. It triggered widespread outrage, drawing thousands of youths to the capital's Shahbagh intersection to protest what they deemed a sentence too lenient for a man nicknamed the "Butcher of Mirpur" for his brutalities in 1971.
The gathering of youths at Shahbagh soon turned into a never-seen-before mass movement, which prompted the government to amend International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, 1973 to give the state the right to appeal on behalf of the war crimes victims. Before the amendment on February' 17, the state could appeal only against an acquittal.
The prosecution and the defence appealed in March.
After the apex court delivered its verdict, a legal debate ensued over the acceptability of a review petition in this case.
International Crimes Tribunal-2 on December 8 issued the warrant of execution against the convicted war criminal after the SC released the full text of its verdict on December 5.
On Tuesday night, after the jail authorities had made all preparations to hang Mollah, defence counsels went to Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain, the chamber judge, to seek a stay.
Justice Syed Mahmud stayed the execution process till 10:30am the next day.
In the last two days, the court heard the two sides.
Yesterday, the five-member bench came up with its order around 12:10pm, saying, "Both the petitions are dismissed."
Four other judges of bench are Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, Justice Wahhab Miah, Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain and Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury'Manik.
In an immediate reaction to the verdict, Abdur Razzaq said the government would have to execute the verdict "legally" only after the release of the full order of the Appellate Division that dismissed the review petitions.
He added the jail authority was bound to follow the Jail Code.
During the hearing, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam said the provisions of the Jail Code were not applicable to this case.
In the afternoon, as jail officials asked Mollah whether he would seek presidential pardon, the death row inmate replied in the negative.
He was hanged by' the neck at Dhaka Central Jail at 10:01.
Hailing the SC ruling, different student organisations brought out processions in the capital while hundreds of people at Shahbagh were in a jubilant mood.
"It's another victory' for the nation in this month of victory'," said Imran H Sarker, the convener of Gonojagoron Mancha, a platform that demands the highest punishment for war criminals.
On August 2, 2010, Quader Mollah was shown arrested in the war crimes case and on May 28, 2012, he was indicted on six charges.
He was given 15 years in jail by the tribunal and the apex court for three other charges: killing of a journalist, a poet and her mother and two brothers and a student.
For the Keraniganj mass killing on November 25, 1971, the tribunal ordered his acquittal but the Supreme Court sentenced him to life.
Another charge was related to the killing of 344 people in Alubdi village in Mirpur on April 24, 1971. Both the courts found him guilty and the apex court upheld the tribunal's life imprisonment awarded to him.
The sixth and final charge was of killing Hazrat Ali Laskar, his wife, three daughters and his two-year-old son on March 26, 1971. One of the three daughters was raped.
I Iazrat's eldest daughter was raped too but she survived and testified against Mollah. The tribunal had found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment but the apex court changed the sentence to capital punishment.
Appeals in the war crimes cases against six others are now pending with the Appellate Division.
They are former Jamaat ameer Ghulam Azam and leaders Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, Delawar Hossain Sayedee and Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and its former leader Abdul Alim.
The tribunals awarded capital punishment to Mojaheed, Sayedee, Kamaruzzaman and Salauddin and sentenced Ghulam Azam to 90 years in jail and life imprisonment to Alim for their wartime offences.
The SC is now holding hearings on the appeal in the case against Sayedee. The court is yet to fix any date for hearing others.