Bangladesh police fired rubber bullets at protesters on Wednesday, after the execution of a top Islamist leader heightened tensions in a country reeling from the murders of several secular and liberal activists. The violence came as police charged Khaleda Zia, leader of the main Bangladesh opposition, with masterminding arson attacks during anti-government protests last year - the latest in a string of charges she claims are politically motivated.
Hours earlier her main political ally, Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at a Dhaka jail for the massacre of intellectuals during the 1971 war. Police said hundreds of Nizami's supporters attacked them with stones in the north-western city of Rajshahi, where a liberal professor was killed by suspected Islamists last month.
"There were 500 Jamaat activists who were protesting the execution. We fired rubber bullets as they became violent," Rajshahi police inspector Selim Badsah told AFP, adding that about 20 were arrested. Jamaat and ruling party supporters also clashed in Chittagong, where about 2,500 Islamists attended a service for the executed leader, the port city's deputy police chief Masudul Hasan told AFP. Security was tight across the country, with checkpoints erected on main roads in Dhaka to deter violence and thousands of police patrolling the capital. Nizami, a 73-year-old former government minister, was the fifth and most senior opposition figure executed since the secular administration set up a controversial war crimes tribunal in 2010.