Mir Quasem Ali of Jamaat-e-Islami receives death penalty just days afters after party leader is also given capital sentence

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A special tribunal in Bangladesh has sentenced to death a senior member of the country’s largest Islamist party. It is the second capital sentence in a week for atrocities committed during the 1971 independence war against Pakistan.

After the judge read the sentence to a packed courtroom in Dhaka on Sunday, Mir Quasem Ali protested, calling the witnesses who testified against him “fake”. The 62-year-old is a member of Jamaat-e-Islami’s highest policy-making body and considered to be one of the party’s top financiers.

Last week the court sentenced to death the party’s leader, Motiur Rahman Nizami, for the 1971 war crimes. Another senior leader has already been hanged.

In protest the Jamaat-e-Islami called a nationwide general strike on Sunday, though no violence was reported. The court’s previous verdicts have triggered street violence.

Bangladesh accuses Pakistani soldiers and local collaborators of killing three million people during the nine-month war. About 200,000 women were raped and about 10 million people forced to flee to refugee camps in neighbouring India.

The tribunal found Ali guilty on eight charges, two of which carried a death sentence, including the abduction and murder of a young man in a torture cell. Ali was also sentenced to 72 years in prison on the other charges. His lawyers said they would appeal.

Since it was set up in 2010, the tribunal has passed 12 verdicts against mostly senior leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, which had openly campaigned against independence but denied committing atrocities.

Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has called the trials a long overdue effort to obtain justice for war crimes, four decades after Bangladesh split from Pakistan. But critics say she is using the tribunals to weaken the country’s opposition parties.