SQ Chy allowed power of attorney

The first war crimes tribunal of Bangladesh on Thursday directed jail authorities to allow BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury to sign a power of attorney to fight defamation.

The BNP MP from Chittagong, son of former Acting President of Pakistan Fazlul Quader Chowdhury, has been indicted for 23 war crimes charges.

The three-judge International Crimes Tribunal – 1, set up to try crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War, indicted the six-time MP on Apr 13.

Chowdhury had filed a petition seeking an inquiry into the source of a conversation between himself and another person that was recorded in the jail and uploaded on YouTube.

He also appealed to the court to allow him to fight a legal battle against his defamation.

The BNP leader has been recently sued for sodomy, apparently for sexually assaulting a fellow inmate who had been assigned to serve the former prime ministerial advisor currently enjoying division at the Kashimpur Jail – 1.

The tribunal said this was an internal matter of the jail authorities and the tribunal had no jurisdiction over the matter. As for the permission to sign a power of attorney, the tribunal directed the jail authorities to allow Chowdhury to do so.

There was a second application from the BNP policymaker where he prayed that proceedings during parliament sessions and seven days before and after those sessions be declared null and void.

He had cited parliament members’ privilege act and said MPs were exempt from such proceedings during parliament sessions and a week prior and after the sessions.

The tribunal said if any member of parliament was arrested on criminal charges then the privileges accorded to them ceased to exist and the court was merely obligated to intimate the matter to the Speaker, which, the judge said, had been done.

The tribunal said that the application did not have any merit and was thus rejected.

SQ Chy in ICT

The prosecution submitted formal charges against Salauddin Quader Chowdhury on Nov 14, 2011 and the tribunal took them into cognisance three days later.

A former prime ministerial adviser on parliamentary affairs when BNP chief Khaleda Zia was in office, the Chittagong MP was shown arrested for war crimes charges on Dec 20, 2010, five days after his arrest.

The investigating agency submitted a 119-page report with around 8,000-page data to the chief prosecutor on Oct 3 in a bid to prove allegations of war crimes during the 1971 war.

The BNP leader was indicted on Apr 4 on 23 counts of war crimes.