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Bangladesh Jamaat enforces nationwide strike over party chief's death penalty

Xinhua, January 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

Bangladesh's largest Islamist party enforced a nationwide dawn-to-dusk strike Thursday in protest of an apex court verdict that upheld death penalty for its chief for 1971 war crimes.

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party, in a press release published on its website on Wednesday, made the announcement of the dawn-to-dusk strike starting from 6:00 a.m. (local time) on Thursday.

The announcement of the strike came shortly after Bangladesh's Supreme Court Wednesday upheld the death penalty for Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islmai party's Ameer (President) Motiur Rahman Nizami.

Security has been beefed up in capital Dhaka since Wednesday night, law enforcers were deployed at different strategic points.

Despite the strike, the traffic on short routes in and around Dhaka was almost regular as no activities of pro-hartal activists were visible throughout the day.

No major incidents have so far been reported.

73-year old Nizami served as the agriculture andindustries minister in Khaleda Zia's 2001-2006 cabinet.

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.

Defense lawyer Khandaker Mahbub Hossain told journalists shortly after the announcement of the verdict on Wednesday morning that they will file a review petition with the SC if Nizami wants.

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

Apart from them, Jamaat Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party ( BNP) leader Salaudin Quader Chowdhury were executed on Nov. 22 last year.

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