Bangladesh Supreme Court upholds death for BNP leader

Bangladesh’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the death sentence for the…

Chief Justice SK Sinha had last month upheld the death sentence of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) leader Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mojaheed, the former commander of the Pakistan backed Al-Badr militia which committed various crimes including secret killings of academics and intellects along with systematic rapes.

War criminal Salauddin Quader Chowdhury will file a petition, challenging the Appellate Division verdict that upheld the death penalty to the BNP leader.

On October 1, 2013, a war crimes tribunal had found him guilty of nine of the 23 charges brought against him by the prosecution.

Bangladesh Supreme Court today upheld the death sentence of Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury for crimes against humanity during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.

Talking to media, Attorney General Mahbub-e-Alam, among others, expressed satisfaction with the verdict against the accused. Defence counsels said they were disappointed with the judgement and planned to seek a review by the top court itself after the full text of the verdict was released by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court.

Chowdhury, 66, a standing committee member for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) whose father was formerly an acting President of Pakistan, was sentenced to death two years ago by a controversial domestic war crimes tribunal.

Security has been beefed up in places in Dhaka and Chittagong, some 242 km southeast of the capital city.

“Chowdhury became a victim of political vengeance”, party spokesman Asaduzzaman Ripon told reporters.

The BNP said it was “shocked and aggrieved” by the ruling on Chowdhury, who served as an adviser to party leader and two-times former premier Khaleda Zia.

Later, he joined BNP and was elected to parliament on its tickets.

Many government opponents claim that the authorities use the war crimes tribunal as a tool to silence dissent.

Another Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Molla, convicted of war crimes in 1971, was executed on December 12, 2013.

In 1996, Chowdhury and his National Democratic Party took part in the then opposition Bangladesh Awami League party-led movement against the then BNP government that saw the introduction of non- party caretaker government for holding parliamentary polls.

During that conflict, East Pakistan, as Bangladesh was then known, seceded from Islamabad’s control. The Islamists had openly campaigned against independence for Bangladesh.