Nizami executed
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami chief and former minister Matiur Rahman Nizami was executed on Wednesday on charge of crimes against humanity during the liberation war in 1971.
Also a former member of parliament, Nizami was executed inside the Dhaka central jail shortly after the midnight past Tuesday following exhaustion of all legal options.
The Inspector General of Police (IGP), AKM Shahidul Hoque, confirmed to the Prothom Alo that Nizami was executed at 12:10am on Wednesday.
Earlier in the evening, Nizami’s family members met him in jail for the last time at 8:00pm on Tuesday.
Some 25 family members of Nizami stayed around one and half an hours inside the jail and had their final talks with Nizami.
The ameer of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami is the fifth such convict, who was hanged after awarded with death sentence by the International Crimes Tribunal, Bangladesh (ICT,B).
The jail authorities started taking all necessary preparations to execute the Jamaat leader shortly after the government’s execution order reached the prison on Tuesday afternoon.
The home ministry ordered the jail authorities to hang Nizami after the chief of the Islam-based political party refused to seek presidential mercy for his life, the last step of the legal process before the execution.
Security in and around the Dhaka Central Jail was beefed up with the deployment of huge contingent of law enforcement agency members in the area.
Additional police and Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) members were seen to station around the Dhaka jail.
Besides, members of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) were deployed in the capital as elsewhere in the country to fend off any untoward incident.
All the roads around the central jail were made off-limits to traffic in the evening.
Earlier, an inmate of Kashimpur Central Jail, Mohammad Raju, was brought to Dhaka Central Jail on Tuesday as he was believed to be the main hangman for Nizami.
Members of law enforcement agencies entered the jail along with hangman Mohammad Raju around 3:00pm, officials said.
On 15 March, the ICT,B issued a death warrant for Nizami on charge of crimes against humanity during the liberation war.
Earlier on 6 January this year, a four-member bench of the Appellate Division, headed by the chief justice, Surendra Kumar Sinha, upheld the death sentence of the Jamaat ameer.
The apex court upheld his death penalty on three of the four counts of charges while he was acquitted on the rest one.
The SC upheld his life term imprisonment on two charges, out of four in connection with the arrest, detention, torture, and murder of three people, including headmaster Maulana Kasim Uddin of Pabna Zila School on 4 June 1971, complicity in torture, murder and rape at Mohammadpur Physical Training Institute in Dhaka, and murder of Badi, Rumi, Jewel and Azad at Old MP Hostel in Dhaka on 30 August 1971.
The ICT,B sentenced Nizami the capital punishment each on four counts of charges of war crimes.
On 29 October 2014, the ICT,B-1 sentenced Nizami to death for committing crimes against humanity during the 1971 liberation war.
Nizami filed an appeal with the SC on 23 November 2014 challenging the death sentence and claimed himself innocent and sought to be cleared of the charges.
Earlier on 22 November 2015, two former ministers—BNP standing committee member Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and Jamaat-e-Islami secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed—were executed on charge of crimes against humanity during the liberation war in 1971.
Before that, Jamaat-e-Islami assistant secretary general Muhammad Kamaruzzaman was executed on 11 April 2015 and another assistant secretary general Abdul Kader Molla on 12 December 2013 on the same charge.
Jamaat, however, claimed all along that the trial process was flawed and its leaders have been made victims of political vendetta.
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