Bangladesh Islamist party chief to hold for conflict crimes

Police officers stand guard in front of the gate of International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) before a verdict against Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami in Dhaka June 24, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Biraj

Bangladesh’s ideal courtroom on Thursday rejected a final attraction with the aid of the chief of the topIslamist celebration against a dying sentence for atrocities committed for the duration of the 1971 war of independence, lawyers stated, that means he may be hanged at any time.

The ultimate court in January upheld the demise penalty for Motiur Rahman Nizami, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami birthday celebration, for genocide, rape and orchestrating the bloodbath of top intellectuals all through the 1971 conflict.

Nizami, 73, a former legislator and minister under Khaleda Zia while she changed into high minister, has been in prison in view that 2010, when he was charged with struggle crimes through a tribunal set up viaprime Minister Sheikh Hasina that 12 months.

The battle crimes tribunal has sparked violence and drawn criticism from opposition politicians, inclusive of leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, that it’s far victimizing Hasina’s political warring parties.

all the legal battles are over,” Nizami’s legal professional, Khandaker Mahbub Hossain, advisednewshounds. “Now it’s miles up to him, whether he’s going to searching for clemency from the president, or not.”

masses of people flooded the streets of the capital, Dhaka, to cheer the verdict, but there has been noreport of violence, although Jamaat referred to as a national strike for Sunday in protest.

authorities have deployed extra safety forces in Dhaka and someplace else as comparable precedingjudgments brought on violence that killed round 2 hundred, specially Jamaat activists and police.

No Peace with out Justice, a non-profit frame based totally in Italy, has called the tribunal’s lawsuits “a weapon of politically motivated revenge whose actual aim is to goal the political competition“.

The authorities denies the accusations.

the verdict comes because the Muslim-majority state suffers a surge in militant violence in which atheist bloggers, academics, religious minorities and foreign useful resource employees have been killed.

within the final month by myself, five people, which include a university trainer, homosexual activists and a Hindu have been hacked to dying by way of suspected Islamist militants.

The authorities has blamed the increase in Islamist violence on Jamaat-e-Islami, however the institutiondenies any hyperlink to the attacks.

4 opposition politicians, along with three Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, have been convicted with the aid of thewar crimes tribunal and finished because overdue 2013.

approximately three million humans have been killed, reputable figures display, and hundreds of womenhad been raped, at some point of the nine-month conflict, wherein some factions, including the Jamaat-e-Islami, opposed the ruin from what turned into then referred to as West Pakistan.

but the celebration denies that its leaders devoted any atrocities.

Saheli