Bangladesh is on high alert ahead of the possible executions of two influential opposition leaders who were convicted of committing war crimes during the country’s independence war against Pakistan in 1971.
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Secretary-General of Jamaat-e-Islami Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid (67) and BNP leader Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury (66) were hanged at Dhaka Central Jail at 12.45 am, said a senior jail official, who witnessed the execution.
Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid were hanged in Dhaka Central Jail early Sunday.
Till now, 15 people have been convicted by the worldwide Crimes Tribunal, a domestic court set up by the Awami League government in 2008 to try war criminals from the 1971 independence struggle. A reporter sustained injuries and was rushed to hospital, while three others escaped unhurt.
Islamabad yesterday branded the tribunal’s trials flawed, and called for reconciliation over the nine-month war which pitted Pakistani forces and allied militias against Bangladeshi freedom fighters.
The executions took place hours after family members met with the two men in the prison and Bangladesh’s Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal announced that the presidential clemency – their final chance for reprieve – had been turned down.
Besides opposing the Liberation War, it had formed the Al-Badr, led by Mujahid, with the leaders and activists of the then student wing, the Islami Chhatra Sangha.
Violent protests had followed the hanging of two other war criminals – Jamaat leaders Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Abdul Quader Mollah. ICT sentenced Mujahid to death in April 2013.
An hour before the execution, in a statement from Dhaka, JeI said Mujahid had not admitted his guilt and had not sought mercy from the president.
Chowdhury, a six-time MP and a former minister, was buried at the family graveyard at his ancestral home in Raujan’s Gahira Village in Chittagong after a funeral prayer. About 3 million people were killed.
Hasina’s government has denied the presence of ISIS in the country and alleged that the deaths of the foreign nationals were fomented by her political opponents and could have been a plan to disrupt the work of the war crimes tribunal.
Leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a letter sent Tuesday to the top US diplomat for South Asia, voiced concern that “democratic space is shrinking” in Bangladesh amid “a growing climate of violence, fear and self-censorship”.
Nisar said the only crime of the opposition leaders of Bangladesh was that 45 years ago they had showed loyalty with their country and supported the constitutional government at that time.
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The minister said that whatever was happening in Bangladesh was a clear violation of global human rights and laws. They have unfolded against a background of rising extremist violence, with deadly attacks on secular intellectuals and religious minority groups becoming more frequent over the past year.
