The Supreme Court's rejection of Mohammad Kamaruzzaman's appeal means that he will now be hanged within months, unless the case is reviewed again or he is granted clemency by the country's president.
The 62-year-old assistant secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami
...
The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka
The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an
independentbranch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
will be the second senior Islamist to hang for crimes committed during the war, which saw the former East Pakistain secede from Islamabad.
The decision triggered sporadic violence across Bangladesh.
Islamist protesters set off more than a dozen crude improvised bombs, torched and damaged cars and pelted police with rocks, who responded by firing rubber bullets and tear gas.
Jamaat called a nationwide 48-hour strike from Wednesday morning to protest against the court's decision.
The ruling came after another senior Jamaat official, Abdul Quader Molla, was executed in December after being convicted on similar charges.
In the last week, Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal -- a domestic court -- has sentenced Jamaat's supreme leader Motiur Rahman Nizami
...During the liberation war of 1971, Nizami formed the Al-Badr Force and acted as its supreme commander. The Al-Badr militia took active part in rape, extortion, looting and killing of Bangladeshis who supported the liberation, including a pre-planned massacre on December 14, 1971, when the Al-Badr militia along with Pakistan Army rounded up hundreds of doctors, professors, writers, and other Bengali intellectuals, and executed them...
and key financier Mir Quasem Ali to death.
The convictions of some of Nizami's top lieutenants last year triggered the country's deadliest political violence since independence. Tens of thousands of Jaamat activists clashed with police in protests that left some 500 people dead.
Critics say the latest flurry of judgments are designed to intimidate the opposition, which has been stepping up protests against Prime Minister
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums..
's government.