Pakistan’s parliament on Wednesday passed a unanimous resolution condemning Nizami’s execution in protest of which Turkey on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Bangladesh.
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Additional police were deployed at important installations of the city against fearing backlash as the activists went on rampage across Bangladesh after the special war crimes tribunal handed down death penalty to Delawar Hossain Sayeedi in 2013.
Clashes erupted in the northwest and the south of the country on Wednesday, with police firing rubber bullets at stone-throwing Islamists protesting against the 73-year-old’s execution, officers said.
Pakistan offers condolences to the bereaved family members and the followers of Nizami.
His body is taken to his village – Sathiya of Pabna for his funeral and burial.
The prime minister’s son, who also advises her on ICT affairs, criticised BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia for making Nizami a minister.
He marshaled his hardline Jamaat-e-Islami party, turning it into a weapon to suppress the independence movement.
Meanwhile, several hundred people, joined by a number of 1971 veterans, staged a midnight vigil at Shahbagh Square in the central part of the capital and rejoiced the execution as soon as the news broke.
May 11, 2016- An Islamist leader has been hanged in Bangladesh for crimes during the war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.
The trials have widened a gulf between proponents of a more secular nature of Bangladesh’s nationalism and Islamist groups, with violence often targeting secular writers, bloggers, atheists and others.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has blamed the upsurge in violence on the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and the Jamaat-e-Islami, although both groups deny having any links with the attackers. “The executive order to carry out the death sentence has been sent to the prison authorities”, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said prior to the execution.
The Catholic Church does not support capital punishment, but advocates for rule of law and justice, said Bishop Gervas Rozario of Rajshahi, chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission.
“For 45 years, people of this country have continued a movement for the trial of war criminals to get rid off this national disgrace and it has paid off”, he said. “Nizami has been deprived of justice”.
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Jamaat says the tribunal’s trials are politically motivated aimed at eliminating its leadership, but the government maintains they are needed to heal the wounds of the war.
