[DAWN] Bangladesh on Tuesday executed the leader of the country's largest Islamist party for war crimes, officials said, a move set to exacerbate tensions in the volatile Muslim-majority nation.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...
, leader 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...
party, was hanged at a prison in the capital Dhaka, just days after the nation's highest court dismissed his final appeal to overturn the death sentence for atrocities committed during the country's 1971 war.
Law and Justice minister Anisul Huq told AFP the 73-year-old leader was hanged just before midnight (1800 GMT) after he refused to seek mercy from the country's president.
"He was executed between 11:50 pm and 12:00 am midnight," Huq said.
In 2013 the convictions of Jamaat officials for war crimes triggered the country's deadliest violence in decades. Around 500 people were killed, mainly in festivities between Islamists and police, and thousands were tossed in the calaboose
Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up!
Nizami is the fifth and highest-ranked opposition leader -- and the fourth from Jamaat -- to have been executed since December 2013 for war crimes despite global criticism of their trials.
"We've been waiting for this day," Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told news hounds, adding that people "will remember this day forever".