[4] The Code of Criminal Procedure 1898 provides that a person awarded the death penalty "be hanged by the neck until he is dead.
"[5] For murder cases, the Appellate Division requires trial courts to weigh aggravating and mitigating factors to determine whether the death penalty is warranted.
[8] Causing grievous bodily harm by burning, poison, or acid, if the victim's eyesight, hearing, face, breasts, or reproductive organs are damaged.
These offences include: providing aid to the enemy, cowardice, and desertion, and inducement to such and cowardly use of a flag of truce or any act calculated to imperil Bangladesh.
[13] After India briefly invaded, Bangladesh was free from the brutality of Pakistani rule but faced the difficult task of rebuilding a country that was already desperately poor and prone to natural disasters.
[17] The Second Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty: 1991 has also not yet been ratified.
"[19] The fact that a very wide range of crimes are punishable by death potentially conflicts with Bangladesh's International obligations.
This therefore means there is no other alternative punishment available and the jury is deprived of the ability to apply discretion to certain circumstances relating to the crime or the accused.
At the time, the summer of 1999, Ali lived with his mother and elder sister in the slums of western Bangladesh’s Manikganj District.
[20] Ali was sentenced by the High Court Division to death by hanging under section 6 of an earlier version of the Women and Children Repressive Prevention Act, 1995.
The court held "no alternative punishment has been provided for the offence that the condemned prisoner has been charged and we are left with no other discretion but to maintain the sentence if we believe that the prosecution has been able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
The legislature cannot make relevant circumstances irrelevant, and deprive the court of its legitimate jurisdiction to exercise its discretion not to impose death sentence in appropriate cases.
[25] The first person to be convicted in the Tribunal was Abul Kalam Azad, who had left the country and was not present for his trial.