Bangladesh hangs two for 1971 war crimes

Pakistan on Sunday voiced serious concerns over what it called “unfortunate executions” of two Bangladeshi opposition leaders for alleged war crimes.

Mujahid, 67, of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, and Chowdhury, 66, were hanged at 12.55am at Dhaka central jail after president Abdul Hamid rejected their appeals late on Saturday for clemency.

After the execution, ambulances escorted by elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and armed police came out of the prison complex carrying the bodies.

Here it is also told that paramilitary border guards and other forces were deployed mainly in Dhaka to avoid any violence or rage following the incident.

The foreign office, meanwhile, said it summoned Pakistani envoy here to register its protest over Pakistan’s unacceptable remarks over the executions.

The note said that Pakistan has once again acknowledge its direct involvement and complicity with the atrocity committed during Bangladesh’s independence war by openly taking the side of those convicted of crimes against humanity.

The executions – and the war crimes tribunal that led to them – also met with criticism from a few foreign governments.

“No-one will be spared if they tried to act violently”, said AKM Shahidul Hoque, inspector general of police, just ahead of the execution.

Mojaheed was minister of social welfare from 2001 to 2006, and he was secretary-general of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s main Islamist party.

“I’ve waited for this day for a long 44 years”, said Shawan Mahmud, daughter of top musician Altaf Mahmud, who was killed by militia that Mujahid was convicted of leading during the war. The most significant such event was the mass demonstrations in 2013, popular known as the Shahbag Protests, which demanded the death sentence for Jamaat-leader Abdul Quader Molla.

US lawmakers overseeing foreign policy described the tribunal as “very flawed” and a means of political retribution.

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.

The BNP accused Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of presiding over a politically-motivated killing.

He said the country was being run on loans borrowed from World Bank and worldwide Monetary Fund (IMF) and the entire nation had been enslaved by United States and Europe.

World has been extending a mixed response to these execution, while Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan maintains that Pakistan, India and Bangladesh had agreed to try no one for the 1971 war crimes.

Such extremist violence was once rare in Bangladesh, which is mostly Muslim but with a strong secular tradition.