Bangladesh executes Islamist leader for 1971 war crimes

Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party

Bangladesh on Tuesday executed the leader of the country's largest Islamist party for war crimes, officials said, a move set to exacerbate tensions in the volatile Muslim-majority nation. Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at a prison in the capital Dhaka, just days after the nation's highest court dismissed his final appeal to overturn the death sentence for atrocities committed during the country's 1971 war of independence with Pakistan. Law and Justice minister Anisul Huq told AFP the 73-year-old leader was hanged just before midnight (18:00 GMT) after he refused to seek mercy from the country's president.
The execution has sparked fears it could trigger a fresh wave of violence in the majority Sunni Muslim country, which is reeling after a string of killings of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities by suspected Islamist militants. In 2013 the convictions of Jamaat officials for war crimes triggered the country's deadliest violence in decades. Around 500 people were killed, mainly in clashes between Islamists and police, and thousands were arrested. Nizami is the fifth and highest-ranked opposition leader - and the fourth from Jamaat - to have been executed since December 2013 for war crimes despite global criticism of their trials.
Hours before the hanging, family members of Nizami met him for the last time at the Dhaka Central Jail, as hundreds of police and elite security forces cordoned off the British colonial-era prison.
The 1971 conflict, one of the bloodiest in world history, led to the creation of an independent Bangladesh from what was then East Pakistan. Prosecutors said Nizami was responsible for setting up the pro-Pakistani Al-Badr militia, which killed top writers, doctors and journalists in the most gruesome chapter of the war. Their bodies were found blindfolded with their hands tied and dumped in a marsh at the outskirts of the capital. The trial heard Nizami ordered the killings, designed to "intellectually cripple" the fledgling nation. He was convicted in October 2014 by the International Crimes Tribunal, which was established in 2010 by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government and has sentenced more than a dozen opposition leaders for war crimes.