The Supreme Court on Tuesday started hearing the appeal filed by condemned convict Salauddin Quader Chowdhury challenging the death penalty handed down to him for his war crimes.
The four-member Appellate Division bench, headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, will also hear the appeal on Wednesday. The other judges of the bench are Justice Najmun Ara Sultana, Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain and Justice Hasan Foez Siddique.
Khandker Mahbub Hossain and ASM Shahjahan stood for the BNP leader while Attorney General Mahbubey Alam represented the state. On October 1, 2013, the International Crimes Tribunal-1 found the BNP leader guilty of crimes against humanity during the War of Liberation and condemned him to death.
On October 29 of the same year, Salauddin Quader Chowdhury filed an appeal with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court against the ICT verdict. The tribunal indicted Salauddin Quader for his involvement in crimes against humanity on 23 counts under different provisions of section 3 (2) of the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act 1973. The tribunal found Salauddin Quader, the son of Pakistan Convention Muslim League president Fazlul Quader Chowdhury, guilty of the crimes of genocide at Rauzan and murder of minority Hindu community members, including Nutan Chandra Singh, the founder of Kundeshwari Owsadhalay of Gohira, Awami League leaders and supporters of Bangladesh’s war of independence. The tribunal also found him guilty of the charge of torture on the accused carried out on captives at his ancestral house ‘Good Hills’ in the port city of Chittagong during the 1971 Liberation War.
