Dhaka--Bangladesh tightened security nationwide Sunday after a senior Islamist was hanged for war crimes during the 1971 independence conflict, a move that triggered anger among his opposition supporters.
Police said extra officers were deployed in the capital and other major cities hours after Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, the third most senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was executed in a Dhaka prison late on Saturday.
"We're alert against any bid to create anarchy or violence," a police spokesman told AFP, saying police and paramilitary officers were patrolling key places to prevent his supporters rallying.
Kamaruzzaman was convicted in 2013 by a controversial war crimes tribunal of carrying out a massacre in a village as head of a pro-Pakistan militia.
Jamaat, the largest Islamist party, called a nationwide "prayer day" for Sunday and a strike on Monday in protest at Kamaruzzaman's "heinous killing". The party branded it an act of "revenge and pre-planned murder" by the secular government.
The 62-year-old's hanging is expected to deepen a months-long political crisis that has seen the Islamists and the main opposition party launch nationwide protests to try to topple Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
But the execution is unlikely to trigger the widespread deadly violence that was unleashed after the only other execution for wartime atrocities, also of an Islamist, was carried out in 2013.
Hundreds of Jamaat activists were killed that year when the party held a series of nationwide protests against trials of its leaders by the tribunal, which was established by Hasina's government.
Security forces have since rounded up thousands of Jamaat supporters in a massive crackdown on the unrest.
Bangladesh went ahead with the execution despite last-minute pleas by the United Nations, the European Union and human rights organisations to halt the hanging. The UN has said the trial did not meet "fair international" standards.
Hundreds of secular activists and supporters of the trials gathered in central Dhaka on Saturday night to cheer and celebrate the death of a man they called a "war butcher".
AFP
