Bangladesh SC Upholds Death Sentence for 1971 War Criminal

Bangladesh SC upholds war crimes death sentence of top Islamist Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid.

File image of Ali Ahsan Mujahid, general-secretary of Bangladesh’s biggest Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami. (Photo: Reuters)

Bangladesh’s Supreme Court today upheld the death sentence against 67-year-old Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid, the second highest ranking leader of the fundamentalist group Jamaat-e-Islami.

Mujahid was convicted for war crimes – including the massacre of intelligentsia, scientists and academics – during the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

The fundamentalist was the former commander of Al-Badr, the militia raised by Pakistan to crush Bangladesh’s struggle for independence.

Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha’s four-member bench confirmed the death penalty.

The court found that the intellectuals were massacred by Al Badr under Mujahid’s leadership while the Pakistani troops were busy with their preparedness for surrender.
– Mahbub-e-Alam, Attorney General

Under a previous Supreme Court decision, he can now file a petition within the next 15 days seeking a review of the judgement by the apex court itself as his last legal resort to evade the gallows.

Mujahid’s lawyers said they planned to file the petition.

Mujahid Held Guilty by Tribunal

Demands for the trial of the war criminals resurfaced in 2008 largely after he commented that the “anti-liberation forces never existed” and denied Jamaat’s role in 1971. The Jamaat-e-Islami called the liberation war a “civil war” which further infuriated people as demands for trial grew louder.

Mujajid filed his appeal on August 11 last year against his capital punishment handed down by the country’s International Crimes Tribunal.

The tribunal had said, during the time of judgement in 2013, that it had reviewed Mujahid’s role in 1971 during the trial.

“The manner in which the accused exercised his position of authority on Al-Badar men, the principal perpetrators in executing the planned and designed mass killing of intellectuals can justify a finding of accused’s substantial position of authority as an aggravating circumstance,” said the tribunal in a damning indictment of his crimes.

You (Mujahid) had told one (Pakistani) army captain that before the proclamation of clemency by the (then Pakistani) president, they (the detainees) would have to be killed. Following this decision, you with the assistance of accomplices killed the civilian detainees by causing inhuman torture.
– International Crimes Tribunal

(With PTI inputs)