JS empowers ICTs to try organisations

State, complainants now can appeal against war crimes verdicts

 

In a major breakthrough, the parliament on Sunday brought an amendment to the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) law empowering the war crimes tribunals to try and punish any organisations, including Jamaat-e-Islami, for committing crimes during country’s liberation war of 1971.
The significant amendment was brought during the passage of the much-talked-about bill which also brought some other changes to International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, 1973 to allow the government and informants and complaints to appeal against any verdict of the war crimes tribunals.

Earlier on Wednesday, the parliamentary standing committee on law ministry rejected a proposal to empower any “aggrieved people” to appeal against a verdict of an international crimes tribunal.
The bill, placed before the parliament the same day, had proposed giving the government and aggrieved people the right to appeal with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court.
Before Sunday’s amendment, the law allowed only the convicts to appeal against any conviction.
The government brought the changes to the law in the wake of the ongoing mass movement at Shahbagh in the capital and elsewhere in the country.
People burst into protest on February 5 when a verdict delivered by a war crimes tribunal sentenced Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Mollah to life in prison. The protesters feel Mollah was handed down "a lenient sentence" and that he should be awarded the death penalty.