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Sangram editor, 3 others face contempt rule

Staff Correspondent
Documents submitted by the defence of Jamaat leader ATM Azharul Islam to prove their client innocent apparently turned out to be contemptuous at the International Crimes Tribunal-1 yesterday.
The tribunal, instead of accepting newspaper reports, issued a contempt rule against four, including the daily Sangram's editor, for publishing and making comments when the war crimes case against the Jamaat-e-Islami assistant secretary general was pending with the court.
Anwarul Haque, the lone defence witness and also a nephew-in-law of the accused, wanted to exhibit two reports on Azharul's trial published by the Jamaat's mouthpiece Sangram about seven months ago.
The tribunal asked four people -two journalists of the Sangram, and two others based on the daily's reports - to appear before it on August 20 to explain why contempt of court proceedings should not be initiated against them.
They are Abul Asad, editor of the Sangram, his Rangpur correspondent, Ekramul Haque Dulu, former unit commander of Badarganj Muktijoddha Sangsad, and Azizur Rahman Sarkar Ranga, former Chhatra League president of Rangpur, as mentioned in the reports.
The Sangram reports, headlined “Allegations brought against Azhar during the Liberation War are baseless" and "There was no student leader named Azhar from 119] 69 to [ 19]74", were published on December 27, 2013 and January 26, 2014 respectively, quoting Dulu and Ranga.
Justice M Enayetur Rahim, chairman of the three-member tribunal, observed that the reports were published after the court had begun recording the testimony of the prosecution witnesses on December 26, 2013 and were thus contemptuous.
The 'contemptuous' reports came to the tribunal's attention when the defence witness was trying to exhibit them and prosecutor Zead Al Malum prayed to the court not to accept them as evidence.
Defence counsel Abdus Subhan Tarafdar repeatedly prayed to the tribunal to allow the reports.
The defence tried to defend their stance saying the prosecution had submitted evidence that was recorded during investigation in the case. However, the tribunal did not buy the argument as the investigation had taken place at pre-trial stage.
Tarafdar told the tribunal that there was precedence of accepting such evidence in other war crimes cases.
In response, Justice Enayetur Rahim said there was no scope to make public statements regarding a trial after framing of charges.
"We will see if [newspapers] can publish such reports during trial and if the reports influenced trial proceedings," he said.
Earlier, the same tribunal sentenced the daily Sangram editor and publisher and his Feni correspondent to imprisonment for a few minutes for publishing a "contemptuous" report over trial proceedings and fined them Tk 5,000 each.
The defence witness, who is 52, yesterday exhibited the SSC, HSC, bachelor and master's certificates of Azharul.
After his testimony, the prosecution began cross-examining him until the proceedings were adjourned until today.
Azharul, who faces six charges for his alleged involvement in crimes against humanity and genocide during the Liberation War in 1971, was produced before the tribunal yesterday.