The defence lawyers for detained Jamaat assistant secretary general Mohammad Kamaruzzaman on Wednesday filed an application to the International Crimes Tribunal–2 seeking retrial of his case.
The case of Kamaruzzaman, indicted on June 4, 2012 on seven charges of crimes against humanity committed during the war of independence in 1971, is at the stage of examining prosecution witnesses.
The tribunal is scheduled to examine the 16th prosecution witness today.
Earlier, Jamaat former chief Ghulam Azam, amir Motiur Rahman Nizami and nayebe amir Delwar Hossain Sayedee filed retrial applications in the ICT-1 and the tribunal is scheduled to deliver its order today.
The 174-page retrial application was submitted to the tribunal’s registrar seeking rejection of the indictment order and to restart the case from the very beginning, defence lawyer M Tajul Islam told reporters at a briefing following the submission of the application.
He said that they would file similar applications in the cases against Jamaat secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and assistant secretary general Abdul Quader Molla.
The defence lawyer said that they filed the application in view of the publication of former ICT-1 chairman Justice Nizamul Huq’s Skype conversation with a Brussels-based Bangladeshi lawyer Ahmed Ziauddin.
The transcript of the Skype conversation was published in Bangali newspaper Amar Desh from December 9 to December 13, 2012.
Justice Nizamul on December 11, 2012 resigned from his post over controversy following the publication of the alleged Skype conversation.
Tajul said that from the Skype conversation, it was learnt that the formal charges of the first eight cases in the ICT-1 and ICT-2 were made by Ziauddin and his men in Brussels and the cases later proceeded on the basis of the formal charges.
Among the first eight cases, ICT-2 is now dealing with the cases of Kamaruzzaman, Mojaheed and Quader Molla and former BNP minister Abdul Alim who was a Muslim League leader in 1971.
Of them, ICT-1 is now dealing the cases of Ghulam Azam, Nizami, Sayedee and BNP lawmaker Salauddin Quader Chowdhury.
The defence lawyer said that in the earlier re-trial applications it was pointed out that Justice Nizamul was biased in the trial process.