Bangladesh executes opposition leader

Bangladesh has executed a high-profile leader of opposition Jamaat-e-Islami Party, Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, over the crimes he allegedly committed during the independence war from Pakistan in 1971.

Bangladeshi authorities said the 62-year-old was hanged on Saturday night at a jail in the capital, Dhaka.

“Mohammad Kamaruzzaman has been executed at 10:30 pm Bangladesh time (1630 GMT),” Media outlets quoted Law and Justice Minister Anisul Huq as saying.

Prison authorities say four specially trained workers hanged him using a rope, in line with Bangladeshi jail procedure. Kamaruzzaman was pronounced dead by a magistrate and a government doctor.

The execution of the senior opposition figure was carried out days after the country’s highest court dismissed his appeal for a final review on Monday.

Kamaruzzaman had decided not to seek mercy from the president.

Jamaat-e-Islami has warned that executing Kamaruzzaman would have “dire consequences.”

In 2013, a domestic war crimes tribunal handed the death penalty to Kamaruzzaman and other senior members of the party in what is seen by rights advocates as an attempt to silence Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s opponents.

The secular government in Dhaka, however, says the sentences are needed to heal the wounds of the 1971 conflict, which saw Bangladesh gaining independence from Pakistan.

The United Nations on Wednesday called on Dhaka to stop carrying out the death sentences, saying the trials in 2013 did not meet international standards.

“The UN Human Rights Office has long warned that, given serious concerns about the fairness of trials conducted before the tribunal, the government of Bangladesh should not implement death penalty sentences,” said a statement by the UN’s rights office on Wednesday.

Kamaruzzaman is the second Jamaat-e-Islami leader hanged in Bangladesh in less than two years. Abdul Quader Molla, another influential leader of the party, was executed at the order of the government-sponsored tribunal on December 12, 2013.

Bangladeshi people have repeatedly taken to the streets in major cities to voice their protest against the controversial trials of opposition leaders and activists.

More than 120 people have been killed and hundreds more wounded in clashes between protesters and security forces over the past three months.

JR/HJL/SS

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