DHAKA: A special Bangladesh court yesterday sentenced to death the leader of the country’s largest Islamist party for war crimes, in a long-awaited verdict that triggered sporadic protests and violence.
The war crimes tribunal found Motiur Rahman Nizami, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, guilty of mass murder, rape and looting during Bangladesh’s war of independence against Pakistan in 1971.
Head judge Enayetur Rahim sentenced Nizami to “hang by the neck until his death” for orchestrating the killing of doctors, intellectuals and others during the conflict as head of a ruthless militia.
“It’s a historic verdict,” chief prosecutor Haider Ali told reporters outside the packed and heavily guarded court in Dhaka.
Ali said Nizami, Jamaat’s leader since 2000 and a minister in a former Jamaat-allied government, led the notorious Al Badr militia “which took part in many heinous crimes.”
Security was tightened across Bangladesh ahead of the ruling after similar judgements against several of Nizami’s senior lieutenants plunged the country into one of its worst crises last year.
After the verdict was issued, Jamaat supporters took to the streets in several cities and towns to protest, clashing with police and border guards, but it was quiet in the capital.
Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas in northeastern Sylhet to disperse demonstrators there, the city’s police commissioner Rokon Uddin said.
Jamaat, more than a dozen of whose leaders are being tried for war crimes, called a three-day nationwide strike starting today, saying it was “stunned” by the verdict.
Junior home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said “all sorts of security measures” had been taken across Bangladesh including deployment of extra police, amid fears the sentence could unleash a new round of bloodletting.
“We won’t tolerate any attempt to create instability or chaos,” he said on Tuesday.
Tens of thousands of Jamaat supporters fought with police and more than 500 people died in the earlier unrest and subsequent political violence ahead of disputed polls in January.
The verdict, originally scheduled for June, was postponed then at the 11th hour because Nizami was suffering from high blood pressure.
As leader of now defunct Islami Chhatra Sangha (ICS), prosecutors say, Nizami turned the then student wing of Jamaat into a pro-Pakistani militia which killed professors, writers, doctors and journalists.
The aim was to make the fledgling nation an “intellectual cripple,” prosecutor Mohammad Ali said before the verdict.
“When it was clear Pakistan was losing the war, as the chief commander of Al Badr he ordered a ‘hit list’ based on which top intellectuals were abducted and killed,” he said. AFP
