Jamaat-i-Islami chief Sirajul Haq has strongly condemned the death sentence given to a veteran politician and former assembly member, Maulana Abdul Subhan, by a so-called and controversial tribunal in Bangladesh, and termed it a political victimisation of the opposition by the ruling Awami League (AL) government led by Hasina Wajed, daughter of slain AL leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
In a statement here on Wednesday, the JI chief said that Maulana Abdus Subhan's only crime was his support for a united Pakistan. He said earlier the controversial tribunal, appointed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, had awarded the death sentence to a number of veteran JI leaders and a former JI chief of Bangladesh, Professor Ghulam Azam, who had breathed his last in jail during the course of his 90 years imprisonment.
Sirajul Haq said it was an irony that neither the United Nations nor any of the human rights bodies had raised voice against the biased and inhuman decision of the controversial tribunal, nor any of the Muslim rulers, except the government of Turkey, had taken notice of the matter.
He said that all the western countries who were trying their level best for an end to the capital punishment in Pakistan had kept mum over the award of death sentence against senior and veteran Bangladesh JI leaders while the Pakistan government had also maintained criminal silence on the issue although an agreement had been reached between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh and signed by former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman that there would be no trial of war crimes. The JI chief said that the death sentence to an eminent religious scholar was an insult to humanity and the murder of justice and Bangladesh could suffer because of such decisions.