A special Bangladeshi court yesterday handed the death sentence to the leader of the nation’s largest Muslim party for war crimes, in a long-awaited verdict that triggers fears of fresh violence.
The war crimes court 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.
Judge Enayetur Rahim sentenced Nizami to “hang by the neck until his death” for orchestrating the killing of top doctors and intellectuals 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, who became Jamaat’s leader in 2000, led the notorious al-Badr militia “which took part in many heinous crimes.”
Security was tightened across Bangladesh ahead of the verdict after similar judgements against several of Nizami’s senior lieutenants plunged the country into one of its worst crises last year.
Tens of thousands of Jamaat supporters fought with police, with more than 500 people dying in the unrest and subsequent political violence ahead of disputed polls in January.
Jamaat called a three-day nationwide strike starting today in protest at Nizami’s verdict.
Bangladeshi Junior Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said before the verdict that “all sorts of security measures” had been taken across the nation amid fears of a new bout of bloodletting.
Extra police and border guards were deployed yesterday in the capital and other major cities, security officials said.
The verdict, originally scheduled for June, was postponed at the 11th hour because Nizami was suffering from high blood pressure.
As leader of the 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.
Nizami is already on death row after being sentenced to hang in January for trafficking weapons and trying to ship them to a rebel group in northeast India.
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