Bangladeshi tribunal defers verdict for six days over 2024 killings
Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) on Tuesday deferred for six days the scheduled verdict against eight policemen on charges of crimes against humanity over the killing of six people during the violent 2024 student-led protests.
“We are sorry. The verdict has not been prepared. The judgment in the case will be pronounced on January 26,” chairman of the three-judge panel Justice Golam Mortuza Mozumder said.
The tribunal earlier fixed January 20 for delivering the verdict against Dhaka police’s then commissioner Habibur Rahman, former joint commissioner Sudip Kumar Chakraborty and six others while four accused, including the two officers, were tried in absentia.
The 2024 protests, dubbed ‘July Uprising’, toppled then prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was sentenced to death alongside former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on November 17 after their trial in absentia on the identical charges of crimes against humanity.
Trials of several ministers in the past Government and leaders of Hasina’s now disbanded Awami League are underway in the ICT-BD. The tribunal’s chief prosecutor Tajul Islam, meanwhile, said Bangladesh’s interim Government of Muhammad Yunus decided not to renew the contract of international criminal law expert Toby Cadman as “special adviser” to the prosecution team amid reports that the British lawyer has resigned.
He said Cadman did not resign or step down and rather approached the Law Ministry to inquire if the interim Government intended to renew the agreement which expired on November 19. “There is no question of resignation or stepping down,” Islam told reporters amid speculations.
British freelance journalist and rights activist David Bergman in a Facebook post on Monday said Cadman informed him that his contract had ended in November but an extension was offered which he declined. “My contract expired in November and I was offered an extension but I decided not to extend it. It would not be appropriate to make any comment as to reasons for stepping down,” Bergman’s post quoted Cadman as saying.
The British lawyer is the joint head of London-based law firm Guernica 37 while he previously worked on Bangladesh’s ICT-BD trials in Dhaka as an adviser to the defence team in 2011 when the past Government was pursuing the trial of hardened collaborators of Pakistani troops during 1971 Liberation War. The chief prosecutor of Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal, Mohammad Tajul Islam speaking during a news conference in Dhaka.
