Dhaka: A top leader of Bangladesh’s fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party, A T M Azharul Islam, was sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal for committing atrocities during the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.
Islam, 62, assistant secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was found guilty of five out of six charges including the murder of hundreds of minority Hindus, rape, abduction and torture.
Islam became the 16th person and the 11th Islamist to be convicted of atrocities by the International Crimes Tribunal.
“He shall be hanged by neck until he is dead,” pronounced chairman of the three-member panel of judges, Justice Enayetur Rahim while delivering a 158-page verdict after Islam appeared on the dock.
The judge said that Islam deserved no punishment other than death penalty as five of the six charges against him were proved beyond doubt and he never showed any gesture of remorse in subsequent years for his acts in 1971.
As the verdict was delivered, Islam stood up in the dock and shouted “I am innocent!” and the verdict had been “dictated” by the government.
Defence lawyer Tajul Islam rejected the charges and said he would file an appeal.
“We are not at all satisfied with the verdict. It was based on fictitious testimonies of witnesses, we will challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court,” he told reporters.
Islam, who was arrested in August 2012 and indicted on November 12 last year, was charged on six counts of atrocities and in one of the major proven charges he was accused of leading the massacre of 1,225 people in Rangpur.
Tight security vigil was enforced as a microbus carried Islam, attired in a cream colour coat, to the tribunal at the Supreme Court complex in the central part of the capital from Dhaka Central Jail.
After the verdict, Jamaat-e-Islami called a two-day nationwide general strike from tomorrow to protest the sentence.
“The government is hatching plots to kill Jamaat leaders in a planned way…Islam is the victim of the government plot,” said the party in a statement calling the nationwide stoppage.
Jamaat said it would observe the strike from 6:00 am to 5:30 pm on Wednesday and Thursday, protesting “the government’s conspiracy to kill Islam”.
It also demanded release of all party leaders convicted for war crimes.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2010 opened an inquiry into war crimes committed during the nine-month war.
The tribunals have angered Islamists who call them a politically motivated attempt by Hasina to persecute the leadership of Jamaat-e-Islami, a key part of the opposition coalition.
Over 200 people have been killed in violent protests against the tribunal and its decisions, most of them Islamist party activists and members of the security forces. (PTI)
