Bangladesh Supreme Court wraps up appeal hearing of Jamaat-e-Islami's warcrimes convict

DHAKA: Bangladesh Supreme Court today wrapped up the appeal hearing of a top leader of fundmentalist Jamaat-e-Islami outfit against his warcrimes conviction and fixed June 16 for the final verdict, two years after he was sentenced to death by a special tribunal.

Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid, the secretary general of fundamentalist Jamaat, which was opposed to Bangladesh's 1971 independence had filed his appeal on August 11 last year against his capital punishment handed down by the country's International Crimes Tribunal-2 on July 17, 2013.

" Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha has set June 16 for the verdict," a spokesman of the attorney general's office told newsmen shortly after a four-member bench of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court wrapped up the hearing by both the state and defence sides.

Mujahid was the general secretary of Jamaat's the then student front and second in command of notorious Al-Badr militia force, which was regarded as an elite auxiliary unit of Pakistani troops during the 1971 Liberation War.

The tribunal had sentenced him to death saying five of the seven charges of genocide, murders, tortures, incitements and complicity in atrocities and conspiracy and planning against Mujahid were "proved beyond doubt".

Bangladesh started the war crimes trial in 2010 constituting the high powered International Crimes Tribunal in line with ruling Awami League's electoral pledges.

The two tribunals so far disposed 18 cases trying 18 people and handing down death penalty to 13 while three of them were tried in absentia as they fled the country to evade justice.

Officially, three million people were killed in the war by the Pakistani army and their Bengali-speaking collaborators during the 1971 Liberation War.