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Final verdict on Bangladesh Islamist party leader's death sentence set on Aug. 30

Xinhua, August 28, 2016 Adjust font size:

Bangladesh's apex court on Aug. 30 will deliver its final verdict on the review petition filed by an influential leader of the country's largest Islamist party, who was sentenced to death in 2014 for war crimes including mass killings.

A five-member bench of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha on Sunday set the date after hearing arguments from both the prosecution and the defence.

If review petition of Mir Quasem Ali, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party's central executive committee member, is rejected, the last option for him will be to seek presidential mercy.

The apex court on March 8 upheld the punishment on eight counts, acquitted him on one, and changed the penalty in another.

Mir Quasem Ali, known as a key financier of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, later filed a review petition with the apex court against his death.

Ali was arrested in June 2014 from the offices of his newspaper Naya Diganta, a leading Bengali daily.

Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-2) in November 2014 awarded death sentence to Ali on a crime against humanity case.

Ali, who is now behind the bar, 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 Bangladesh liberation war in 1971.

Eight of the 14 charges leveled against him had been proven while two were partially proven, ICT-2 announced while delivering the verdict.

After returning to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Bangladesh's independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, established the first tribunal in March 2010, almost 40 years after the war.

Four Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party leaders - Motiur Rahman Nizami, Abdul Quader Molla, Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid - have already been executed for 1971 war crimes.

Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Salaudin Quader Chowdhury was also executed on Nov. 22 last year.

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 put the number at between 300,000 and 500,000. Enditem