Report in The daily star, May 16, 2017
The Supreme Court yesterday upheld its earlier verdict that handed convicted war criminal Delawar Hossain Sayedee imprisonment until death for his crimes against humanity committed during the Liberation War in 1971.
Effectively now, Sayedee would have to serve in jail until his natural death.
A five-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha dismissed two separate petitions filed by Sayedee and the government seeking review of its previous verdict.
Sayedee pleaded for acquittal from the charges, while the government sought for his capital punishment.
The grounds on which the apex court dismissed the review petitions could not be known instantly as the full text of the order was not released yesterday.
However, the chief justice during hearing on the petitions on Sunday said the majority of judges of the apex court bench had sentenced Sayedee to imprisonment until death, considering all relevant issues including the evidence and documents.
After the order yesterday, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam expressed disappointment, saying he would bear the pain and sorrow in his mind that Sayedee was not sentenced to death.
Among the convicted war criminals, Sayedee was the most cunning and harmful for the country and human civilisation, but he was not given the capital punishment, he told reporters at his office.
The attorney general, however, said the prosecution could not produce the documents and evidence properly against Sayedee.
Sayedee’s defence lawyer Khandker Mahbub Hossain told reporters that they had accepted the apex court order despite bearing sorrow and anger.
Talking to reporters, Sayedee’s son Masood Bin Sayedee claimed that they had been deprived of justice.
He also added only acquittal was justice for his father.
The apex court bench yesterday expunged some of its observations in the appeal judgement of the case against the war criminal.
It passed the expunge order following a petition filed by prosecutor Haider Ali, his lawyer Advocate AM Aminuddin told The Daily Star.
In the judgement, the SC had observed, “Similarly, in our views the prosecutor appears to be a novice law officer, who has no elementary knowledge in conducting a case on behalf of the prosecution and also the method of examination-in-chief of a witness. There are serious loopholes in the way the case has been conducted and he has not endeavoured to rectify those defects.”
It adds, “The prosecutor has examined almost all the witnesses without comprehending which facts to be disclosed from their lips. The prosecution ought to have filed application for expunging ext A [exhibit-A] but in this case, we have noticed that the prosecutor took no positive step in this regard and allowed a forged document to remain with the record as evidence.”
The International Crimes Tribunal-1 on February 28, 2014 sentenced Jamaat-e-Islami leader Sayedee to death.
Later on September 17, 2014, Sayedee’s capital punishment was commuted to imprisonment until death after the war criminal moved an appeal with the Supreme Court.
On January 12 last year, the government filed a review petition with the SC, seeking death penalty of Sayedee for his war crimes.
Sayedee also filed a plea on January 17 last year seeking review of the SC verdict. In the petition he sought acquittal from all the charges in which he was found guilty by the SC.http://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/sayedee-has-serve-time-until-death-1405882
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