21 Oct 2012: Tribunal further warning on witnesses

After the end of the cross examination of the 13th defense witness, the following interchange took place between the tribunal chairman and the defense lawyers, which is summarized below

Chairman: So Mizanul Islam you do not have any further defense witnesses.

Mizanul Islam: not for today. One defense witness is coming tonight. If he comes then we will bring him tomorrow.

Chairman: we have already passed order on last occasion that if you fail to bring the remaining all DWs today then Defence would be debarred from calling them anymore and no further adjournment would be allowed. That order still stands and we do not need to pass any further order on this issue.

Razzak: You allowed nine months for the prosecution case. But you are forcing to close defence case in one and half month. You should allow us reasonable chance to prove our case.

Chairman: the defence is given sufficient time. We have already passed an order on 18th October that no further adjournment would be allowed. That order still stands.

Razzaq: We have filed an application for recall of that order. You should here us on that application.

Chairman: no, we will pass order in our chamber. We do not need to hear you.

Razzaq: you should consider that we have no right to file any appeal against your order. Your order is final. So before passing any order you should hear us.

Chairman: We have passed our order.

Razzaq: We have not yet received certified copy of that order. We have right to review your order.

Chairman: we will not give any certified copy of any order in future.

Razzaq: why you are getting angry? You should not pass any order being angry.

Chairman: we will stop giving certified copy of orders.

Razzak: if you pass order in chamber and do not give us certified copy of the order how we will know fate of an application.

Chairman: defense is filing these applications for delay and we should not waste time hearing these applications.

Razzaq: there was no reasonable ground to pass the order of debarring us from calling any further DW on 18th October. We had defense witness number 13 on that day and you recorded him throughout that day. We had no fault and despite that you passed the order of debarring the DWs. You were not sitting idle on 18th October.

Chairman:  it is not matter whether we were sitting idle. We passed that order and that still stands. If we think in future to review that order then we will think. But for now that order stands.

Razzaq: please give us opportunity to call the remaining defense witnesses. They are being threatened and they became traceless. We have detailed this in our application.

Chairman: order has been passed.

Razzaq:  We hope you will hear us before you act upon your order.

Chairman: tomorrow.