The leader of Bangladesh's Jamaat-e-Islami is set to hang within days after the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld his death sentence for war crimes. Motiur Rahman Nizami was convicted of murder, rape and orchestrating the killing of intellectuals in 1971. He was tried by a controversial war crimes tribunal set up by the government that has sparked deadly protests, with Jamaat and its ally the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) saying it is aimed at eliminating their leaders.
Attorney General Mahbubey Alam said jail authorities would begin preparing for Nizami's execution once they received a copy of the verdict. "We're satisfied. Now there is no bar to execute him unless he seeks clemency from the president and the president pardons him," he told AFP after the Supreme Court dismissed the 73-year-old's final appeal.
Security has been stepped up in Dhaka, already tense after a string of killings of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities by suspected Islamist militants. Three senior Jamaat officials and a key BNP leader have been executed since December 2013 for war crimes despite global criticism of their trials. Jamaat said the charges against Nizami, a former government minister, were false and aimed at eliminating the leadership of the party. 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.
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