Bangladesh hangs key Jamaat-e-Islami leader
September 04, 2016
DHAKA: Bangladesh hanged a top leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party on Saturday for crimes committed during the 1971 war of independence, the law minister said.
Mir Quasem Ali, 63, a key financier of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was executed at Kashimpur Central Jail on the outskirts of the capital, for murder, confinement, torture and incitement to religious hatred during the war.
Ali was hanged at 10.35 pm local time (4.35 pm GMT), Law Minister Anisul Haq told Reuters, days after Bangladesh's highest court rejected his final appeal against the death sentence for atrocities committed during the nine-month war.
The execution took place amid a spate of militant attacks in Bangladesh, the most serious on July 1, when gunmen stormed a cafe in Dhaka's diplomatic quarter and killed 20 hostages, most of them foreigners.
The war crimes tribunal set up by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2010 has sparked violence and drawn criticism from opposition politicians, who say it is targeting her political foes.
The government denies the accusations.
Human rights groups say the tribunal's procedures fall short of international standards, but the government rejects that assertion.
Media tycoon Ali was the last prominent Jamaat leader who was executed after he was sentenced to death in 2014 by the war crimes tribunal.
Jamaat-e-Islami, which has said the charges against Ali were baseless, has called for a half-day strike for Monday in protest. It said their dead leader was a victim of a political vendetta.
Previous convictions and executions have triggered violence that has killed about 200 people, most of them Jamaat activists, and police.
Since December 2013, four other Jamaat leaders, including former leader Motiur Rahman Nizami, and a leader of the main opposition party, have been executed for war crimes.
