Staff Reporter :
Mir Quasem Ali, former Al-Badr leader and Jamaat-e-Islami Majlish-e-Shura member, on Sunday prayed for a review of the Supreme Court’s verdict upholding his death penalty for his crimes against humanity committed during the Liberation War in 1971.
Barrister Mir Ahmed Bin Quasem, son of Mir Quasem, submitted the review petition with the Appellate Division yesterday morning mentioning 14 grounds of seeking release from the war crime charges.
He submitted the 86 pages review petition.
Senior lawyer Advocate Khandaker Mahbub Hossain, defence counsel claimed that the International Crimes Tribunal-2 (ICT-2) had convicted Mir Quasem taking unverified statements of prosecution witnesses for true.
“The verdict of Appellate Division is contrary to the rule of Law. The tribunal had delivered its verdict depending on the documents submitted by the prosecution. The documents and witnesses submitted by the prosecution against Mir Quasem were motivated,” said Khandaker Mahbub in a press briefing on the Supreme Court premises.
“The Appellate Division upheld the verdict of the tribunal considering Mir Quasem as principal accused, while the tribunal considered him as apparatus. This is a clear ground of motivated verdict,” he said.
“Mir Quasem was in Dhaka when incidents took places in Chittagong, but he had been considered as principal accused thereof,” Khandaker Mahbub also said.
In his petition, Mir Quasem prayed for his acquittal overturning his life-term and death sentence upheld by the Appellate Division on March 8 for crimes against humanity committed during the War of Independence.
The Supreme Court released full text of its verdict upholding the death penalty of Mir Quasem Ali, the Chief Financier of Jamaat-e-Islami, on June 6.
He had filed an appeal with the Supreme Court challenging the death penalty on November 30 in 2014.
The ICT-2 had sentenced Mir Quasem, chief of Al-Badr during the Liberation War in port city of Chittagong in 1971 to death on November 2, 2014.
Out of total 14 charges brought against him for war crimes, the tribunal convicted him on 10 counts of charges and acquitted him from four.
Once the matter of review is resolved and if the death sentence is upheld, the war crimes convict will have the opportunity to seek a presidential clemency. And if the clemency is rejected, the government will order the jail authority to execute the court’s order death sentence.
Mir Quasem Ali was the third most important functionary after Jamaat-e-Islami chief Matiur Rahman Nizami and Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid. The government executed death sentence of both Nizami and Mujahid for their alleged crimes against humanity committed during the Liberation War in 1971.
Mir Quasem, a terror during 1971 in Chittagong, has proved to be a shrewd businessman and politician.
The 63-year old media tycoon pumped billions into the Jamaat-e-Islami since the mid-1980.
Quasem had allegedly paid $25 million to an American lobbyist firm to carry out a smear campaign to make the war crimes trial controversial, said the then Law Minister Shafique Ahmed in the Parliament on April 28, 2013.
