Fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdus Subhan could face charges of crimes against humanity and genocide during the 1971 liberation war when a special Dhaka tribunal will pronounce its decision on December 31.
The three-man tribunal was today scheduled to decide whether it will frame charges against Subhan, an alleged leader of a Peace Committee in 1971.
But the International Crime Tribunal-1 led by Justice ATM Fazle Kabir deferred the date, saying that the court could not prepare the charge framing order against the Jamaat-e-Islami leader. He did not elaborate, The Daily Star reported.
The court now will take its decision on December 31.
On September 15, the prosecution pressed nine charges against Subhan and said his role was similar to that of war crimes convict and former Jamaat chief Ghulam Azam during the war.
Azam, 90, was handed down 90 years in jail in July after he was charged with 61 counts of crimes in all five categories - conspiracy, planning, incitement, complicity and murder.
Subhan, as vice-president of the Pabna Peace Committee, was involved in at least nine incidents of crimes against humanity and genocide, according to the charges.
He was the founder ameer of Jamaat in Pabna and a Majlish-e-Sura member of the party's central unit in undivided Pakistan, said the prosecution.
Last week, senior Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Mollah was hanged for genocide during the war, making him the first war crimes convict to be executed since Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan in 1971.
Mollah was one of five Islamists and other politicians sentenced to death by a special war crimes tribunal set up in 2010 by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The sentences triggered deadly riots and protests by Jamaat and its key ally Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Scores have been killed since January, when the first verdicts were handed down.
