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Security heightened as Bangladesh Islamist leader not to seek presidential clemency

Xinhua, September 2, 2016 Adjust font size:

Authorities in Bangladesh have beefed up security measures around a jail in Gazipur on the outskirts of capital Dhaka as a Bangladesh Islamic leader decided not to seek presidential clemency for his imminent execution.

Mir Quasem Ali, Bangladeshi Jamaat-e-Islmai party's central executive committee member, was found guilty of 14 war crimes committed in 1971, and lost his final appeal against a death sentence over the war crimes allegations, facing execution within "days."

"He told us that he won't seek presidential clemency." Prashanta Kumar Banik, Superintendent of Central Jail-2 at Gazipur's Kashimpur, told journalists on Friday.

He said Mir Quasem Ali informed the jail about his decision when the official asked him.

Sources said jail authorities could carry out the execution anytime as he was reluctant to use the last chance to save his life.

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

Security personnel has been deployed at the main entrance and around the prison since Friday morning.

Ali, 64, is well known as a key financier of the political party Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami.

In June 2014, Ali was arrested from his office of newspaper Naya Diganta, a leading Bengali daily.

After returning to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Bangladesh's independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, set up 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 Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Salaudin Quader Chowdhury was executed on Nov. 22 last year.

Both BNP and Jamaat have described 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 although independent researchers estimate that between 300,000 and 500,000 people died in the 1971 war. Endit