Order on HRW contempt proceedings Sept 4

The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT)-1 on Tuesday set September 4 to pass an order whether to initiate contempt proceedings against New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) for making ‘biased, baseless, utterly false, fabricated and ill-motivated allegations’ in its report regarding the trial of former Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Ghulam Azam. The prosecution of the ICT on August 20, 2013, filed the contempt petition against HRW’s board of directors, its executive director of Asia Division Brad Adams, and its associate for the Asia Division Storm Tiv. The first tribunal on September 2, 2013, issued the notice upon HRW and two of its officials, asking them as to why proceedings would not be drawn against them for contempt of court. In that order, The ICT-1 had said the accused parties unethically made five illegal comments on a sub-judice matter. Today was fixed for passing order on the matter, but the complainant party, in this case the prosecution, remained absent at the courtroom. ‘Today was fixed for passing the order, but we are not ready yet to pass that. We need more preparation,’ the ICT-1 said. After that the first tribunal deferred the date till September 4 accepting a plea of the defence, according to BSS.