The chamber bench of the Appellate Division yesterday fixed July 25 for hearing a petition filed by convicted war criminal Jamaat leader Mir Quasem Ali seeking review of his judgement that had upheld his death penalty. In response to a government plea, the Chamber Judge of the Appellate Division Justice Hasan Foez Siddique set the date and sent the matter to the full bench of the Appellate Division. Earlier, on Monday, Mir Quasem submitted a petition pleading for early hearing on the review plea seeking reconsideration of his death sentence. On June 19, death-row convict Mir Quasem Ali filed the review petition with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court seeking reconsideration of its verdict that had upheld his death originally handed down by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) for crimes against humanity committed during the country’s War of Liberation in 1971. Barrister Mir Ahmed Bin Quasem, son of Mir Quasem, submitted the review petition with the related branch of the Supreme Court seeking acquittal of all seven charges for which the Jamaat leader was awarded death penalty. He said there were 14 grounds mentioned in the review petition seeking release of the convict in the war crimes case. Defence counsel Advocate Khandker Mahbub Hossain at a press briefing claimed that the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) had convicted the Jamaat’s central executive council leader based on unverified statements of prosecution witnesses. On June 6, the ICT issued a death warrant for the Jamaat-e-Islami leader hours after the Supreme Court released the full text of its verdict upholding his death penalty. Earlier, on 8 March, the Appellate Division upheld the death penalty for Mir Quasem for his crimes against humanity committed during the Liberation War. The ICT-2 in a verdict had sentenced Mir Quasem Ali, Al-Badr chief in the port city of Chittagong in 1971, to death on November 2, 2014. On November 30, 2014, Mir Quasem filed an appeal with the SC challenging the death penalty. Among the total 14 charges brought against Mir Quasem for war crimes, the tribunal convicted him on 10 counts of charges and acquitted him from four. The 64-year-old top Jamaat-e-Islami financier, who was kept at Kashimpur jail at Gazipur since his arrest in 2013, was shifted to Dhaka Central Jail from Gazipur on June 20.