This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Bangladesh has executed the leader of the country’s largest Islamist party for war crimes, a move likely to exacerbate tensions in the volatile Muslim-majority nation.

Motiur Rahman Nizami, the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at a prison in the capital, Dhaka, on Tuesday, 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.

The law and justice minister, Anisul Huq, said the 73-year-old leader was hanged after he refused to seek mercy from the country’s president. “He was executed between 11.50pm and midnight,” Huq said.

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The execution raised fears of 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. About 500 people were killed, mainly in clashes between Islamists and police, and thousands were arrested.

Nizami is the fifth, and highest-ranked, opposition leader to have been executed since December 2013 for war crimes despite global criticism of their trials. He is the fourth from Jamaat.

“We’ve been waiting for this day,” said the home affairs minister, Asaduzzaman Khan, adding that people “will remember this day for ever”.

Hours before the hanging, members of Nizami’s family met him for the last time at the Dhaka central jail, as hundreds of police and security forces cordoned off the British colonial-era prison.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Motiur Rahman Nizami, shown speaking in 2005, was the leader of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party. Photograph: Abir Abdullah/EPA

Security has been stepped up in the capital and in Nizami’s home district of Pabna in the country’s west, with magistrates being deployed to hand down instant prison sentences to any lawbreakers. Khan said: “If anyone tries to commit sabotage, our security forces are ready to identify them and take proper measures.”

Since last month an atheist student, two gay rights activists, a liberal professor, a Hindu tailor who allegedly made derogatory comments against the prophet Muhammad, and a Sufi Muslim leader have been hacked to death in Bangladesh.

Jamaat has said the charges against Nizami, a former government minister, were false and were aimed at eliminating the leadership of the party.

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Nizami took over as party leader in 2000 and played a key role in the victory of an Islamist-allied government in the 2001 general election. He was made a key minister in the Islamist-allied cabinet between 2001 and 2006.

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 had 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.

Rights groups say the trials fall short of global standards and lack international oversight, while the government says they are needed to heal the wounds of the conflict. Amnesty International had called for an immediate halt to Nizami’s execution, citing concerns over the fairness of the trials.

The government says up to 3 million people died in the 1971 war, while independent researchers put the figure at between 300,000 and 500,000.