Questions about Bangladesh sentences

The case resulting into capital punishment to Salauddin Quader Chowdhury in Bangladesh had raised many questions in the minds of justice loving people throughout the world.
The defence was given very limited time to prepare the case as compared to that of prosecution. Whilst the prosecution presented its case over a period of 13 months, the defence were only allowed a total of 28 working days, too short a time. Owing to the restriction imposed on calling the number of defence witnesses, the defence was unable to summon 8 witnesses including five from Pakistan. These witnesses were very important to prove the view point of accused that he was in Pakistan during the period of offences blamed on him. Though during the trial, copies of affidavits from these witnesses were submitted to the Tribunal, but court deliberately overlooked their significance. Moreover, in the final judgment of the Trial Court, the Tribunal did not mention the submitted ‘affidavits’ at all.
Additionally, the defence was also not allowed to summon Bangladeshi witnesses. For example, in relation to the four offences for which Chowdhury was sentenced to death, there were 20 witnesses whom they would have summoned. Each of these witnesses would have provided evidence to counter all four of death sentence offences. The court imposed restriction on number of defence witnesses played here too.
Coming to another anomaly in the trial process, unlike the Tribunal, the Appellate Division did consider the affidavits during the appeal. However, in its judgment the court ruled that a UK lawyer representing Chowdhury had ‘beyond doubt manufactured’ six affidavits ‘to save his client Salauddin Quader Chowdhury’ without giving any evidence to support such a judgement. The defence lawyer himself rejected the allegations as these were unwarranted and unsupported by any credible facts. He stated that if the Court was concerned as to veracity or legitimacy of the

statements they could have easily called any of the witnesses to give live evidence where their statements could have been tested in an open adversarial process.
The appellate judgment also ruled that there were a number of technical problems with the affidavits like they did not have a seal of a Bangladeshi counsel. However, the court did not consider section 19(1) of the International Crimes (Tribunal) Act 1973 which states that “A Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence”. Moreover, if the appellate division had doubts about the technical aspects of the affidavits, the witnesses could have been summoned to the court in person.
As part of Chowdhury subsequent application seeking a review of the Appellate Division’s decision, the defence asked that 8 alibi witnesses, who had not be able to testify earlier, be summoned to the court, or admit video statements of the witnesses reading out their affidavits. The court declined to do so.
The defence, finally, filed a duplicate copy of Punjab University certificate in the court. In addition, the lawyers filed a copy of the certificate attested by the Chancellor of the University, its Registrar, head of the department of Political Science, an attested statement written by the registrar about the genuineness of the statement, along with an offer to provide any other assistance and a video of the registrar reading out the statement. The court however, claimed that the certificate was ‘forged’ without seeking any clarification from the said university.
For the defence of alibi in relation to international crimes, the law in vogue at international tribunals does not levy any burden upon the defence to prove the alibi, instead the prosecution must eliminate the reasonable possibility that the alibi is true. This reflects the general criminal law principle that the prosecution must prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.
However, the Tribunal judgment stated that in relation to Chowdhury, onus rests entirely on the accused to prove the plea of alibi, i.e to prove affirmatively that during the War of Liberation in 1971 the accused was present in West Pakistan since 29 March to 16 December, 1971 and not in Bangladesh.
This principle was affirmed by the appellate division, which stated “The plea of the accused undergoing educational in West Pakistan during the relevant times in 1971 being the sheet anchor of the case must be proved beyond doubt.” Law experts must realise that requirement to prove innocence by Chowdhury himself is against the very basic principles of criminal law. In fact not that he must prove that he was innocent, but do so ‘beyond doubt’ which is an even a more strict condition than the burden on the prosecution to prove its case. Similarly, there were grave flaws in trial case of Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, however, paucity of space does not allow their description here.
The ongoing trials of war criminals in Bangladesh, despite being internal matter of the country, in no way prohibits questions raised by international community on the fairness and transparency of judicial process. No conscious person can sit quiet on this and people from Pakistan are no exception. According to Howard Zinn “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people”. Bangladesh, especially the AL should not forget the vision of their founder, Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rehman, who during his rule between 1972-75 declared an amnesty for all the people who were involved in war crimes.
His intention was that the people of Bangladesh wanted independence of Bangladesh and that was achieved. So, the next task was to unite the people from all political parties and to take their assistance to develop the war-torn country. World understands that Hasina Wajid and her Awami League is under the spell of her real masters to carry out the war crimes trial against leaders of JI and BNP and eradicate them through unfair judicial process. Why not, after all, Modi has openly confessed India’s full involvement in dismemberment of United Pakistan. It serves to appease India and accrue political mileage by Awami League. Unfortunately, lukewarm response from international human rights organisations and opinion makers on injustices taking place in Bangladesh reflects their double standards. Ms Hasina Wajid is also advised to refrain from bringing her political vendetta in sacred process of justice.