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Bangladesh's supreme court upholds death penalty for Islamist party chief

Xinhua, January 6, 2016 Adjust font size:

Bangladesh's apex court upheld a death penalty for the largest Islamist party chief on Wednesday over war crimes during the country's war of independence 44 years ago.

A four-member bench of the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha delivered the verdict, upholding the death penalty against the 73-year-old Motiur Rahman Nizami.

Nizami, prsident of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, served as agriculture and industries minister in Khaleda Zia's 2001-2006 cabinet.

The court upheld capital penalty for the Islamist party chief on three charges and life imprisonment on two charges.

On Oct. 29, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-1) handed down capital punishment to Nizami for war crimes which include mass killings of intellectuals.

Defense lawyer Khandaker Mahbub Hossain told journalists shortly after the verdict that they will talk to Nizami to know whether he wants to file a review petition with the court.

The judgment was, however, greeted with huge relief in and outside the courtroom.

Talking to media, Attorney General Mahbub-e-Alam, among others, expressed satisfaction with the ruling against the accused.

According to the rules, the defence will now have an opportunity to file a review petition against the verdict within 15 days.

Nizami was indicted in 2012 with 16 charges of crimes against humanity, including looting, mass killings, arson, rape and forcefully converting people to Muslims during the 1971 war.

The indictment order 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 war.

Earlier a Bangladesh court had sentenced Nizami, Jamaat chief since November 2000, death in a sensational 10-truck arms haul case.

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

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.

Apart from them, Jamaat Secretary General Mujahid and opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Salaudin Quader Chowdhury were hanged on Nov. 22.

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