A Top Islamist Is Executed by Bangladesh

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/world/asia/a-top-islamist-is-executed-by-bangladesh.html

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DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh on Saturday executed a senior Islamist party official convicted of crimes against humanity during the country’s 1971 independence war with Pakistan, two officials and two television stations said.

The party official, Mohammad Qamaruzzaman, was hanged at the central jail in the capital, Dhaka, said a prison official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the highly political nature of the matter.

Forman Ali, a senior prison official, told reporters outside the jail that the execution took place at 10:30 p.m.

A popular television channel, Somoy TV, reported that Mr. Qamaruzzaman was hanged after the completion of all legal and religious procedures. Channel 24 said Mr. Qamaruzzaman’s body would be buried in central Bangladesh, his ancestral home.

Prosecutors say Mr. Qamaruzzaman, an assistant secretary general of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party, headed a militia group that collaborated with the Pakistani Army in Bangladesh in 1971 and was behind the killings of at least 120 unarmed farmers.

Bangladesh blames Pakistani soldiers and local collaborators for the deaths of three million people during the nine-month war for independence from Pakistan.

According to estimates, 200,000 women were raped and about 10 million people were forced to flee to refugee camps in India during that period.

Mr. Qamaruzzaman, who was sentenced in 2013, refused to seek presidential clemency, paving the way for him to become the second person put to death since the tribunals were set up more than four years ago after years of delays.

Bangladesh executed another Jamaat-e-Islami assistant secretary, Abdul Quader Mollah, in December 2013 for similar crimes.

Since 2010, two tribunals have convicted more than a dozen people, mostly senior leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest political party, which had openly campaigned against independence.

The party says the trials are politically motivated.