Bangladesh hangs two opposition leaders for war crimes
The front-page of Sunday’s Daily Star said the pair were “the pitiless, feared faces of genocide” who had “become ministers of the very country they had stabbed and made to bleed”. The State Department said Friday that executions should not take place until it’s clear the trial process meets worldwide standards.
Hundreds of police had been stationed outside the jail in Dhaka’s old quarter where scaffolds had been prepared to execute the pair.
The Jamaat-e-Islami, of which Mujahid was a secretary general, sided with Pakistan during the war.
Muslim-majority Bangladesh has seen an increase in Islamist violence in current months, with two foreigners and 4 secular writers and a writer killed this yr.
Chowdhury, 66, was convicted for atrocities including genocide during the 1971 war.
Pakistan on Sunday expressed its concern on the hangings of Bangladesh National Party leaders, ARY News reports.
On Wednesday, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha dismissed a petition review filed by Mojaheed and Chowdhury requesting the court to overturn its earlier decisions upholding the death penalty originally imposed by the global Crimes Tribunal. He was the senior-most leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party to be sentenced for crimes against humanity.
Of the 15, nine have been Jamaat-e-Islami leaders while two are from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
“We had to endure years of pains and shame as these war criminals would taunt us”.
Sirajul Haq said that Dr Aafia Siddiqui was a respectable daughter of the country but the political leadership had never raised the issue of her release during their visits to the US.
News of the executions comes as Bangladesh has been reeling under a string of terror attacks, beginning with the killing of four secular bloggers and a publisher this year by a Islamic fundamentalist group inspired by the writings of al-Qaeda. JeI has referred to as for a nationwide strike & claimed Mujahid was victim of a “farce trial” aimed toward “eliminating opposition” forces within the country.
Bangladesh has accused the Pakistani army and its local collaborators of killing up to 3 million people during the 1971 war, as well as decimating entire villages and raping thousands of women.
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.
Independent researchers say the toll was much lower.