Roundup: Bangladesh's largest Islamist party's financier loses final appeal against execution for war crimes

Bangladesh's Supreme Court rejected a final appeal by a key Islamist party financier against his death sentence for atrocities committed during the 1971 war of independence, lawyers said on Tuesday.

The supreme court in March upheld the death penalty for Mir Quasem Ali, Jamaat-e-Islmai party's central executive committee member.

A five-member Appellate Division bench of the Bangladesh Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, on Tuesday dismissed the review petition of Ali for his execution.

The Appellate Division bench read the verdict at a jam-packed court room in the presence of a huge crowd of people particularly journalists and lawyers amid tight security.

Security has been beefed up in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country after the verdict against Ali, 64, who is now behind bars.

Ali is well known as a key financier of Jamaat-e-Islami.

In June 2014 Ali was arrested 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 who made his own and party's financial and political fortunes with extraordinary shrewdness after 1971.

Ali, the sixth war criminal to see the verdict at its execution level, reportedly appointed a U.S. lobbyist firm to make the war crimes trial questionable.

He 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 indictment order said Ali was one of the key organizers 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.

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

As per procedure, Alam said death-row war criminal would be asked whether he would seek presidential clemency.

A certified copy of the full review verdict will reportedly be sent shortly to the Dhaka Central Jail through the ICT.

Khandaker Mahbub Hossain, principal counsel for Ali, said that the Jamaat leader and his family would make the decision on whether to seek president's mercy.

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 1971 war.

Four 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.

Apart from them, opposition BNP leader Salaudin Quader Chowdhury was 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 waralthough independent researchers think that between 300,000 and 500,000 died. Enditem