Off the wire
• Fungi to be sent to space by SpaceX rocket  • 2 killed in Afghan capital blast  • 3 Syrian refugee children killed in tent fire in Turkey  • China treasury bond futures close higher Tuesday  • China Hushen 300 index futures close lower Tuesday  • 1st LD: At least 3 killed in suicide bombing in downtown Baghdad  • Commentary: Regional peace, stability overshadowed by Japan's new security legislation  • 1st LD: Highjacker of EgyptAir passenger plane identified as Egyptian  • 4,000 soldiers join military drill in Russia's Irkutsk  • Urgent: Passengers of highjacked Egyptair plane released: Egypt Aviation Ministry  
You are here: 　 Home

Bangladesh Islamist party chief appeals against death penalty for 1971 war crimes

Xinhua, March 29, 2016 Adjust font size:

Bangladesh's largest Islamist party chief Motiur Rahman Nizami filed an appeal with the Supreme Court Tuesday against his death sentence for war crimes in 1971.

Lawyers of Nizami, president of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party, submitted the review petition on behalf of their client, who is now in a prison in Kashimpur on the outskirts of capital Dhaka.

If his review petition is rejected, the last option for him will be to seek presidential mercy.

Bangladesh's Supreme Court on Jan. 6 upheld a death penalty for the 73-year-old Motiur Rahman Nizami over war crimes during the country's war of independence 45 years ago.

Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal-1 issued Nizami's death warrant on March 16 hours after the country's apex court released its full verdict.

Nizami served as agriculture and industries minister in ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's 2001-2006 cabinet.

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

On Oct. 29, 2014, the ICT-1 handed down capital punishment to Nizami for war crimes which include mass killings of intellectuals.

Nizami was indicted in 2012 with 16 charges of crimes during the 1971 war.

Nizami's party had earlier claimed that the government filed ill-motivated, baseless cases against its top leaders in order to make the party leaderless.

Nizami is among the top Jamaat leaders who have been tried in two war crimes tribunals which 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.

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. Endit