Bangladesh opposition leaders executed for 1971 Bangladesh war crimes, jail

Implementing the decisions after a controversial trial of politicians for 1971’s war crimes, Bangladesh government has executed two more people, Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh’s Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid and Qadeer Chaudhary of Bangladesh Nationality Party.

Brigadier General Syed Iftekhar Uddin, inspector general (prisons), said they walked the separate gallows together.

Security has been tightened around the jail, and restrictions have been placed on the use of several roads close to the jail.

Soon 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.

After returning to power in January 2009, Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh’s independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, established the first tribunal in March 2010, nearly 40 years after the 1971 fight for independence from Pakistan.

But supporters and relatives of the two leaders said that no petition for presidential clemency had been filed before they were hanged.

Chowdhury’s son Hummam Quader Chowdhury had told TV channels “we won?t believe that he has the sought the clemency until he is allowed to meet his family members and lawyers”.

Family members of both men met them hours before the death sentences were carried out.

Chowdhury, a six-time member of parliament and senior adviser to former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, was sentenced for his role in a genocide and other killings.

There are fears the latest verdicts could spark fresh unrest in the Muslim-majority nation, which is reeling from a string of killings of secular bloggers as well as the murders of two foreigners in recent months. Jamaat-e-Islami has claimed their leader did not seek presidential mercy. Ali Mojaheed was the secretary-general of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist political party and had served as the country’s Minister for Social Welfare from 2001-’06.

Although global rights groups have criticised the trials as unfair, the government says they are vital for Bangladesh to confront its traumatic birth.

Bangladesh says Pakistani soldiers, aided by local collaborators, killed 3 million people and raped 200,000 women during the war.

The global organization Human Rights Watch asked the authorities to stop the executions, citing “serious fair trial concerns surrounding their convictions”.

However, independent researchers say the overall death toll was much lower.