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Bangladesh's apex court upholds death penalty for key Islamist party financier

Xinhua, March 8, 2016 Adjust font size:

Bangladesh's apex court has upheld a death penalty for an Islamist party leader Mir Quasem Ali over war crimes during the country's war of independence in 1971.

A four-member bench of the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha Tuesday delivered the verdict, upholding the death penalty against the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islmai party's central executive committee member Ali, who is now behind the bar.

Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-2) in November 2014 on a crime against humanity case awarded death sentence to the 64-year-old key Jamaat financier.

The defense for Ali had later filed the appeal to the apex court challenging the tribunal's verdict.

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

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

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

Ali was indicted in 2012 with 14 charges of crimes against humanity, including looting, mass killings, arson, rape and forcefully converting people into Muslims during the war.

The Supreme Court Tuesday upheld the punishment on eight counts, acquitted him on one, and changed the penalty in another.

In June 2014 Ali was arrested from the offices of his newspaper Naya Diganta, a leading Bengali daily, shortly after the tribunal issued a warrant for his arrest.

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

Apart from them, ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury was executed in November 2015.

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. Endit