DHAKA, (PNA/Xinhua) — An ex-minister of Bangladesh’s main opposition party has been sentenced to jail until death for war crimes including mass killings.
The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT)-2 pronounced the verdict in capital Dhaka Wednesday afternoon, saying ex-Minister Abdul Alim, who faced 17 charges of crimes against humanity and genocide, will “die behind bars”.
The 83-year old Alim of ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Naitonalist Party (BNP) is alleged to have created and led pro-Pakistan militias which carried out numerous murders and rapes during the nine-month 1971 war of independence against Pakistan.
The three-member panel of the ICT-2 read the summary of the 291- page verdict in the presence of a huge crowd of people, particularly journalists and lawyers amid tightened security measures in and around the tribunal.
Wheelchair-bound Alim has already denied the arguing that they are politically motivated.
After the verdict, Attorney General Mahbub-e-Alam told reporters that “Nine of 17 charges against Alim were proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“Alim deserves death penalty but he was not given death sentence considering his age and sickness,” he quoted the tribunal as saying in the verdict.
This is the eighth war crimes case verdict in Bangladesh since Jan. 21 this year. Last week the ICT-1 pronounced the verdict on a crime against humanity case, awarding death sentence to another influential BNP leader and Member of Parliament Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, who is also now behind the bars.
Six current and former leaders of BNP’s key ally Bangladesh Jamaat-e- Islami party had earlier been sentenced to either death or life imprisonment for crimes against humanity linked to the country’s war of independence.
Both BNP and Jamaat have dismissed the court as a government “show trial” and said it is a domestic set-up without the oversight or involvement of the United Nations.
After returning to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh’s independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, established the first tribunal in March 2010, almost 40 years after the 1971 fight for independence from Pakistan to castigate those committed crimes against humanity during the nine-month war.