Dhaka--A Bangladeshi Islamist leader lost his final appeal Monday against a death sentence for overseeing a massacre during the 1971 independence war, sparking protests by his supporters that left one dead.
Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, the third most senior figure in the Jamaat-e-Islami party, could now be hanged within days for the slaughter at the so-called "Village of Widows".
Police opened fire on around a dozen Jamaat supporters in the southern coastal town of Noakhali after they took to the streets to protest at the decision.
"We fired in self-defence after they hurled rocks at us," local police chief Anwar Hossain told AFP, saying one protester was killed during the live firing and another injured.
In a brief session at the Supreme Court in Dhaka, Chief Justice S.K. Sinha ruled that a review petition filed by Kamaruzzaman's lawyers had been dismissed and a death sentence passed in 2013 should stand.
The 62-year-old's only chance of avoiding the gallows will be if he is granted clemency by President Abdul Hamid.
But analysts say this prospect is remote because the ruling effectively confirms allegations that he was one of the chief organisers of a pro-Pakistan militia which killed thousands of people.
A controversial domestic war crimes tribunal convicted Kamaruzzaman in May 2013 on charges of torture, abduction and mass killings in his role as a leader of the al-Badr militia during the war.
The conflict led to the creation of an independent Bangladesh from what was then East Pakistan.
Prosecutors said he presided over the massacre of at least 120 unarmed farmers who were lined up and gunned down in the remote northern village of Sohagpur.
Three women who lost their husbands in the massacre testified against Kamaruzzaman in one of the most emotive of all the war crimes trials.
AFP
