The International Criminal Court was gathering yesterday to further discuss the prosecution of Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal regarding alleged crimes within the court’s jurisdiction in the context of the repression of the Rohingya people.
The prosecution called on their next witness. Mr. Mohammad Busharad was questioned, a medicine student whose school was recently closed by police, meaning that he could not do his exams. He “feels like he cannot study.” Regarding the motives why his school was shut down, he did not know.
“Could the shutdown of the school negatively affect your opinions regarding your studies?” Mr. Busharad said that it would definitely impact his opinions.
Later, the defense team called in their witness Mr Masan Min. “What role are you playing in this and have you been on the ground in any of these refugee camps?” He could not really give an answer to this question, but he did remark that “formally, Rohingya are allowed education”.
To sum up, calling in these two witnesses has only yielded little useful information so far. Hopefully, this will change today. The latter witness testimony was soon followed by a speech by the judge. The judge stated that “prosecution still failed to connect Mr Kamal to any alleged crimes in the refugee camp” and “Mr. Kamal cannot be linked to any crimes”.
The prosecution team is “processing the evidence” and will try to call on more witnesses today.
- L. H., NYT Correspondent, currently reporting from The Hague
