Off the wire
• Feature: Shocking photos trigger Chinese animal rights outcry  • BASIC countries call for equitable Paris climate agreement  • Interview: Egypt chess master hopes for more popularity for "the game of kings"  • Urgent: Taliban storms airport in southern Afghan city of Kandahar  • EU agrees on first EU-wide cybersecurity rules  • 30 sentenced for running casinos in south China  • Women, the elderly and youngsters active on mobile purchases: report  • 1st Ld-Writethru: Polluters continue operations despite smog  • EU vows to improve transparency on cross-border tax rulings  • Xinhua Asia-Pacific news summary at 1630 GMT, Dec. 8  
You are here: 　 Home

Verdict on Bangladesh party chief's death sentence on Jan. 6

Xinhua, December 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

Bangladesh's supreme court will deliver its verdict on Jan. 6 the final review petition filed by Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami President Motiur Rahman Nizami.

A four-member bench of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court (SC) headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha Tuesday set the date after hearing arguments from both the prosecution and the defence.

The defense for Nizami had filed an appeal to the apex court to commute the Islamist party chief's death sentence to life imprisonment if he was found guilty for committing crimes during the country's Liberation War in 1971.

On Oct. 29 last year, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-1) handed down capital punishment to the 72-year-old Jamaat chief for war crimes which include the killings of intellectuals.

Nizami was indicted in 2012 with 16 charges of crimes against humanity, including looting, mass killings, arson, rape and forcefully converting people into Muslims during the war.

The indictment order, in a brief profile of the accused, said Nizami was a key organizer of the Al-Badr, an auxiliary force of then Pakistani army which planned and executed the killing of Bangalee intellectuals at the end of the 1971 war.

Nizami is among the top Jamaat leaders who have been tried in war crimes tribunals Prime Minister Sheikh Hasian's Bangladesh Awami League-led government formed in 2010 to bring the perpetrators of 1971 to book.

Three Jamaat leaders -- Abdul Quader Molla, Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, have been executed.

Both Kamaruzzaman and Molla refused to seek presidential clemency.

Both BNP and Jamaat have dismissed the court as a government "show trial," saying it is a domestic set-up without the oversight or involvement of the United Nations.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh was called East Pakistan until 1971. The government of Hasina said about 3 million people were killed in the war although independent researchers think that between 300,000 and 500,000 died. Endit