[Dhaka Tribune] War criminal Motiur Rahman Nizami...During the liberation war of 1971, Nizami formed the Al-Badr Force and acted as its supreme commander. The Al-Badr militia took active part in rape, extortion, looting and killing of Bangladeshis who supported the liberation, including a pre-planned massacre on December 14, 1971, when the Al-Badr militia along with Pakistan Army rounded up hundreds of doctors, professors, writers, and other Bengali intellectuals, and executed them...
's lawyers have urged the Supreme Court to commute his death sentence to life term imprisonment "if he is found guilty" of crimes against humanity.
Prosecution thinks that kind of a submission is equal to confessing guilt, although defence claimed that it was not.
Nizami's counsel Khandaker Mahbub Hossain made the appeal to the Appellate Division yesterday, after the apex court concluded hearing the arguments of defence on the appeal filed by the Jamaat-e-Islami
...
The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka
The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an
independentbranch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
chief challenging the death penalty handed down to him by the war crimes tribunal.
During submission, Khandaker Mahbub Hossain said his client had been shown involved with some incidents in Pabna, but there had been no eyewitnesses.
Moreover, Nizami had been shown as the chief of al-Badr because he was then the chief of Chhatra Sangha, now known by the name Chhatra Shibir. But the said crimes took place when Nizami was no longer with al-Badr.
The counsel also prayed to the apex court to acquit the death row convict of all the charges saying he was not directly involved in any of the crimes.
Nizami was a student in 1971 and was therefore not capable of showing Pakistain army the way to go to places where the offences took place, Mahbub argued.
"There is no credibility of those depositions and charges," he said.
Even then, if the court, believing those witness accounts, found 72-year-old Nizami guilty, then it should commute his death sentence to life considering his age and good behaviour, the defence counsel said.
Mahbub and SM Shahjahan, assisted by Shishir Manir, comprised defence while Attorney General Mahbubey Alam stood for the state.
After the hearing session, Mahbubey told news hounds: "From their [defence's] submission, it appears that for the first time, the lawyers of a convicted Jamaat leader have confessed to [their client's] crimes committed during the 1971 Liberation War and appealed for only commuting the death sentence.
"It is a historical fact that people were killed and the Jamaat leader facilitated those. Motiur Rahman Nizami supported that out of conviction," the chief state lawyer said.