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Arms Haul Verdict

HC now to hear death reference

Little response to Jamaat hartal

Staff Correspondent
A Chittagong court yesterday sent documents of 10-truck arms haul case, including its judgment, to the High Court for scrutinising the death sentences of 14 convicts.
Meanwhile, Jamaat-e-Islami enforced a country-wide dawn to dusk hartal yesterday, protesting the death penalty to its chief Motiur Rahman Nizami in the case.
However, the shutdown did not cause any inconvenience to people as they ignored the call. No major untoward incident was reported from the capital and elsewhere in the country.
Supreme Court Registrar AKM Shamsul Islam told The Daily Star the dispatch section of the HC received the case records from the officials concerned of the Chittagong court.
The death reference section of the HC will now register the case as a death reference, and will prepare a paper book containing all documents, evidence, and statements placed before the trial court, he said.
After that the HC will hold hearing on the death reference, he added.
The registrar also said the convicts of the case could file separate appeals with the HC challenging their convictions within 30 days of the date of delivery of the lower court judgement.
The HC may hold analogous hearing of the death reference and appeals of the convicts, he added.
A total of 398 death references other than that of the 10-truck arms haul case are now pending with the HC, and it has disposed of five death reference cases so far this year, sources at the Supreme Court said.
On January 30, Judge SM Mojibur Rahman of Chittagong Metropolitan Special Tribunal-1 handed down the death penalty to 14 people, including ex-ministers Nizami and Lutfozzaman Babar for smuggling 10 truckloads of firearms in 2004.
The 14 convicts were also given life term imprisonment in another case filed for possessing illegal firearms.
During yesterday's hartal, a large number of businesses, offices and roadside shops were seen open while a huge number of motorised vehicles plied the Dhaka streets.
Long-route buses were, however, off the roads, but movement of trains, launches and planes remained quite normal.
In Rajshahi city, activists of Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat, hurled a crude bomb at a pick-up carrying police personnel. But no one was injured.
Pro-hartal pickets put blockades at different points on Dhaka-Pabna highway while Jamaat-Shibir men vandalised wind screen of a truck at Thanthania in Bogra.
In Chandpur, a mobile court sentenced five Jamaat-Shibir activists to one-month imprisonment each as they were picketing during hartal hours.