Bangladesh Hangs Opposition Leader For 1971 War Crimes
MEP: Bangladesh has executed an Islamist leader of the South Asian country’s Jamaat-e-Islami Party for crimes committed during the war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.
Motiur Rahman Nizami 73, was hanged at Dhaka Central jail at one minute past midnight local time on Wednesday after the Supreme Court rejected his final plea against a death sentence imposed by a special tribunal for genocide, rape and orchestrating the massacre of top intellectuals during the war.
A police officer who witnessed the hanging said that a civil surgeon declared him dead after the body was kept hanging for over 20 minutes.
According to Bangladesh’s Law and Justice Minister Anisul Huq, Nizami refused to seek clemency from the country’s President Abdul Hamid, Amnesty International had also previously called for an immediate halt to Nizami’s execution.
Nizami had led Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami. Hundreds of people gathered near his prison in the capital Dhaka to celebrate the hanging.
In a sign of divided opinion over the hanging, scores of protesters came out in the streets of Dhaka to condemn the execution, while hundreds of others cheered the move.
“We have waited for this day for a long 45 years,” said war veteran Akram Hossain. “Justice has finally been served.”
