Bangladesh’s supreme court Thursday rejected an appeal of the death sentence given to Islamist party leader Motiur Rahman Nizami for war crimes during the country’s 1971 independence struggle, meaning he could be hanged at any time in the coming days.
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Nizami took over as party leader in 2000 and was a minister in the Islamist-allied government of 2001-2006.
In 2013, the convictions of Jamaat-e-Islami leaders triggered the deadly violence in the country that had not been seen in decades, with around 500 people killed, mainly in clashes between protesters and police.
The prison authorities served Nizami the death warrant on March 16 as the apex court decision reached them in writing through the ICT-BD following the Jamaat chief sought review of the Supreme Court judgement, exhausting his last legal opportunity to overturn the verdict.
Clemency has never been granted to a convicted war criminal in Bangladesh.
The SC upheld his life term imprisonment on two charges, out of four in connection with the arrest, detention, torture, and murder of three people, including headmaster Maulana Kasim Uddin of Pabna Zila School on 4 June 1971, complicity in torture, murder and rape at Mohammadpur Physical Training Institute in Dhaka, and murder of Badi, Rumi Jewel and Azad at Old MP Hostel in Dhaka on 30 August, 1971.
Nizami was sentenced to death in 2014 after being charged with murder, rape, looting and collaborating with the Pakistani army during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. “Now there is no bar to execute him unless he seeks clemency from the president and the president pardons him”.
Human Rights Watch has previously said the court’s procedures are not up to global standards.
Both BNP and Jamaat have dismissed the court as a government “show trial”, saying it is a domestic set-up without the oversight or involvement of the United Nations.
She, simultaneously, also maintains that punishment for the 1971 war crimes will further divide the Bangladeshi society and lead to civil violence.
In the last two weeks alone, two gay rights activists, a liberal professor and a Hindu tailor who made derogatory comments against the Prophet Mohammed have been hacked to death.
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Jamaat has called a nationwide strike for Sunday to protest the court’s decision, although analysts said violence was unlikely given the extent to which the party’s support base has been weakened. However, the government has denied the accusations, Reuters reported.
