UNB, Dhaka :
The International Crimes Tribunal-1 on Sunday held back its order until October 20 on the contempt of court charge made against barrister AKM Fakhrul Islam, counsel for the condemned war crimes convict Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, a BNP stalwart.
The three-member tribunal, headed by Justice M Enayetur Rahim, refrained from passing its order in the absence of the accused-contemnor.
Earlier, before making its revised order, Fakhrul’s counsel Alf-e-Sani had informed the tribunal that his client, now in custody in a case filed over leaking the draft of the ICT verdict, was meanwhile denied bail by the designated court.
On January 14, 2013, the tribunal show-caused barrister Fakhrul to explain why contempt proceedings should not be drawn against him for the petition seeking explanation from the tribunal members whether they were privy to alleged skypegate over conducting
the trial, terming mala fide the petition to deliberately malign the tribunal judges and create confusion about the judges in public mind.
.On December 11, 2012, first chairman of the ICT-1 Justice M Nizamul Huq resigned in the wake of controversy over his judicial conduct in running the war crimes trial as he had allegedly been receiving advice regularly through email communication and skype conversations with Dr Ahmed Ziauddin, a Brussels-based Bangladeshi expert on international war crimes. A vernacular daily Amar Desh made the skypegate public.
