Family members meet Bangladesh Islamist party chief on death row

Family members have met death row inmate, Bangladesh's largest Islamist party chief at Kashimpur jail in Gazipur on the outskirts of capital Dhaka.

Seven family members of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party Ameer (president) Motiur Rahman Nizami met him for 40 minutes on Friday morning a day after he lost final battle.

Bangladesh's Supreme Court Thursday upheld its previous verdict on Nizami for crimes against humanity during the country's war of independence in 1971, meaning that the country's largest Islamist party chief now only has the option of seeking the president's mercy to stall his imminent execution.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told journalists Friday that the death sentence of condemned war criminal will be executed after maintaining all legal procedure.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told journalists shortly after the apex court ruling that there was no legal bar to execute condemned killer unless he sought presidential pardon.

As per procedure after the court releases the full text of the verdict, Alam said the death-row war criminal would be asked whether he would seek presidential clemency.

Sources said the full text of Thursday's verdict will soon be released.

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.

Jamaat on Thursday once again pleaded Nizami's innocence and claimed that he had no links with war crimes in 1971.

Jamaat says "Nizami was deprived of justice."

But the government says the trial met the proper standards. Endit