DHAKA: Bangladesh’s top court on Wednesday upheld the death sentence on the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami for the alleged crimes in 1971, paving the way for his execution within months.
The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by Motiur Rahman Nizami, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami, who was convicted of murder and orchestrating the killing of top intellectuals when he was a militia leader during the conflict.
“The court upheld the death sentence in three out of four charges.” prosecutor Tureen Afroz told reporters and added “Most importantly, the death penalty was upheld for the killings of the intellectuals.”
Nizami, 72, Jamaat’s leader since 2000 and a minister in a former Islamist-allied government of 2001-2006, faces the gallows within months unless his case is reviewed by the same court or he is granted clemency by the president.
Three senior Jamaat officials and a key leader of the main opposition party have been executed since December 2013 for war crimes, despite global criticism of their trials by a controversial war crimes tribunal.
The court swiftly dismissed previous reviews of those four opposition leaders on death row, leading to their execution — the latest last November.
Prosecutors said Nizami was the leader of a student wing of Jamaat during the war and turned it into the Al-Badr pro-Pakistani militia which killed top professors, writers, doctors and journalists in the most gruesome chapter of the conflict.
Motiur Rahman Nizami, Jamaat-e-Islami party’s leader since 2000, faces the gallows within months.
Security was tight across the country. Previous convictions of the Jamaat officials triggered the country’s deadliest violence since independence with some 500 people killed, mainly in clashes between Islamists and police.
“We have stepped up security. It is sufficient to prevent any violence,” deputy police commissioner Maruf Hossain Sorder told reporters.
However, Jamaat supporters clashed with police as they staged impromptu protests and marches in several towns and cities, police and local media said.
Police fired rubber bullets to disperse the protesters in the northwestern city of Rajshahi, local police chief Golam Saqlaen told the media. “We have detained two people from the scene,” he said.
The Islamist party also called for a nationwide strike on Thursday, saying the charges against Nizami were “false, baseless and imaginary”.
“The government wants to steer the country towards terrible conflict in a planned way by killing Motiur Rahman Nizami in cold blood through its own fixed blueprint,” the party said in a statement on its website, calling him an “internationally acclaimed Islamic scholar”.
Jamaat said Nizami would now seek a review of the judgement. Defence lawyer Khandker Mahbub Hossain told reporters they would decide their course of action after consulting him.
Since it was established by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government in 2010, the International Crimes Tribunal has sentenced more than a dozen opposition leaders for war crimes. People across the world criticizing the tribunal over execution of dozens of Islamists without having sufficient evidences. Human right organizations were of the view that the government was victimizing the Islamists.
