The panel, led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, upheld the death sentence of the 66-year-old leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for involvement in the killing of a herbal medicine company owner Nutan Chandra Singha, Awami League leader Mozaffar Ahmed and his son, and two incidents of genocide in the country’s southeastern region in Raozan, Chittagong, the Daily Star newspaper reported.
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On 1 October, 2013, the worldwide Crimes Tribunal-1 found the BNP leader guilty of crimes against humanity during the War of Liberation and condemned him to death.
But defence lawyer Khandaker Mahbub Hossain said Chowdhury’s legal team was disappointed and would seek a review of the judgement at the same court.
“The verdict has fulfilled our expectations”, said Attorney general Mahbubey Alam.
A Bangladeshi activist celebrates after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution of opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, convicted of war crimes in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, July 29, 2015.
Salahuddin Chowdhury, leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, was acquitted of one charge, but the Supreme Court upheld the rest of the convictions.
Security has been beefed up in places in Dhaka and Chittagong, some 242 km southeast of the capital city.
SQ Chowdhury was charged for committing crimes against humanity by the war tribunal. He was, however, acquittal over the killing of Satish Chandra Palit in Raozan, for which the tribunal had sentenced him to 20 years in jail. His father was also a former speaker of Pakistan and served as an acting president several times.
Later, he joined BNP and was elected to parliament on its tickets.
He is the second former minister to have the death sentence upheld after Jamaat-e-Islami’s Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid and the fifth to get a verdict on the appeal against the tribunal’s judgment.
After the partition of India in 1947 and until 1971, Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan.
Another Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Molla, convicted of war crimes in 1971, was executed on December. 12, 2013.
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After returning to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh’s independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, established the first tribunal in March 2010, nearly 40 years after the 1971 fight for independence from Pakistan.
