Bangladesh hangs opposition leaders for war crimes

Chowdhury is the leader of main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party while Mojaheed is the secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Two senior Bangladeshi opposition leaders were executed early Sunday for war crimes committed during the 1971 independence war with Pakistan after their last-ditch pleas for clemency were rejected.

Since February, four secular bloggers, a publisher, and two foreigners – an Italian aid worker and a Japanese agriculture researcher – have been killed in attacks linked to Islamic militants.

Supreme Court’s Appellate Division issued the full text of the final verdict on Thursday, a day after it rejected the review petitions of Mujahid and Chowdhury, paving the way for their execution.

Mojaheed was sentenced to death for the murder of intellectuals and his involvement in the killing and torture of Hindus during the 1971 liberation war. He is the second most senior member of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami.

They had sought presidential clemency admitting their guilt.

A few 2,000 troops from Border Guard Bangladesh have started patrolling city streets along with other security forces, said Mohammad Mohsin, a spokesman of the border force.

Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid were hanged in Dhaka’s central jail. While rights groups say atrocities were committed and there needs to be accountability, global doubts over the legal proceedings against the opposition figures have intensified.

Two of the 1971 war crimes convicts, Jamaat leaders Abdul Kader Mollah and Muhammad Quamaruzzaman, were so far executed since the country initiated the process to expose to justice the perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch on Friday urged the Bangladesh government to halt the executions.

The two death row convicts have sought presidential clemency on Saturday as the last resort to safe their lives.

Bangladesh’s war crimes tribunals found the leaders guilty of collaborating with Pakistani forces and committing war crimes, including mass killings.

Hamid has the power to pardon or commute the death sentence of any convict.

Hasina, leader of the Awami League party, denies the tribunal’s actions have been motivated by the South Asian nation’s bitterly divided politics, but leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee voiced concern that “democratic space is shrinking” in Bangladesh amid “a growing climate of violence, fear and self-censorship”.

East Pakistan broke away to become independent Bangladesh after a war between India and Pakistan, which killed about three million people.