ONLINE DESK<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court has acquitted Jamaat-e-Islami leader ATM Azharul Islam of his death sentence in a war crimes case.<\/p>\n
A full bench of seven justices led by Chief Justice Dr Syed Refaat Ahmed delivered the verdict on Tuesday (May 27).<\/p>\n
During the announcement of the verdict, both prosecution and defence lawyers, senior leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, and the party\u2019s legal representatives were present in the courtroom.<\/p>\n
The seven-member bench entered the courtroom at around 9:50 am, and state prosecutor Gazi MH Tamim presented legal arguments before the court. The announcement of the verdict began at 9:55 am.<\/p>\n
UNB adds:<\/p>\n
Earlier, on April 22, the Appellate Division stayed the hearing of a review petition submitted by Azharul Islam in the case till May 6.<\/p>\n
Lawyers Ahsan A Siddik and Mohammad Shishir Manir stood for Azharul Islam in the court during the hearing.<\/p>\n
Following his arrest, Jamaat-e-Islami leader ATM Azhar faced nine charges of \u201ccrimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the chargesheet, he was \u201cresponsible\u201d for killing 1,256 people, abducting 17, and raping 13 women during the Liberation War in the Rangpur region.<\/p>\n
Besides, he was said to have tortured civilians, set fire to hundreds of houses, and committed other atrocities.<\/p>\n
The International Crimes Tribunal sentenced him to death on December 30, 2014, on five out of the nine charges.<\/p>\n
On January 28, 2015, the death-row convict submitted a petition to the Appellate Division claiming his innocence.<\/p>\n
Later, on July 19, 2020, Azharul Islam filed the review petition with the relevant branch of the Appellate Division.<\/p>\n
Following an appeal hearing, the Appellate Division, under a bench led by then-Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain, upheld the death penalty in a verdict delivered on October 23, 2019.<\/p>\n
The full text of the Appellate Division\u2019s verdict was released on March 15, 2020, after which ATM Azhar submitted the review petition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ONLINE DESK The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court has acquitted Jamaat-e-Islami leader ATM Azharul Islam of his death sentence in a war crimes case. A full bench of seven justices led by Chief Justice Dr Syed Refaat Ahmed delivered the verdict on Tuesday (May 27). During the announcement of the verdict, both prosecution […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-35","category-14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60738,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60736\/revisions\/60738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}