- A leader and financial backer of the biggest Islamist party in Bangladesh has been executed for alleged war crimes committed during the war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.
Media tycoon Mir Quasem Ali, 63, of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was sentenced to death two years ago.
The tycoon was hanged at a high-security prison outside Dhaka on Saturday evening.
He was arrested in 2010 and convicted in 2014. He declined to seek a presidential pardon, which would have required an admission of guilt.
A huge security operation was staged before and after his execution. Previous executions have led to huge crowds demonstrating both in support and against them.
An ambulance carrying Ali's body emerged from the jail in the early hours of Sunday and took it to his home village in Manikganj for burial.
Ali's wife Khandker Ayesha Khatun told reporters at the jail that the family wanted to bury him in Dhaka, but this request was refused by the authorities.
"All along he said he was innocent. He said he is being killed unjustifiably," Tahera Tasnim, one of his daughters told the AFP news agency.
She was among 23 family members who met him for the last time in the prison just hours before he was hanged.
Six opposition leaders have now been executed for war crimes since the Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, set up a war crimes tribunal in 2010. Five were top leaders of the Jamaat party.
The domestic war crimes tribunal has been criticized by rights organizations for its “irregular” legal proceedings.
Last week, a group of United Nations (UN) rights experts examining the proceedings demanded a moratorium on Ali’s death sentence and a retrial.
Champa Patel, Amnesty International’s South Asia director, had also said, “The execution of Mir Quasem Ali, following a trial whose fairness was questioned by the UN, will not deliver justice to the people of Bangladesh.”
Brad Adams, the executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division, had said, “Allowing the death sentence in a case with such fundamental doubts about the evidence is unthinkable.”
Prosecutors said Ali had spent millions of dollars of the fortune he acquired in businesses, including shipping, banking and real estate, to hire international lobbyists to derail the war crime trials.
They said Ali was a key commander of the notorious pro-Pakistan militia in the southern port city of Chittagong during the independence war.
Meanwhile, people in Dhaka and Chittagong held impromptu street celebrations after the news of Ali’s execution was broadcast live on television.
The wealthy tycoon had been a financier and the de facto treasurer of the Jamaat-e-Islami Party, which is banned from participating in elections.
Ali was the fifth and the last prominent Jamaat-linked figure to be handed an execution sentence by the special war crimes tribunal.
The supporters of Jamaat claim the government has been eliminating their leaders.
The country is presently on high alert over fears of violence by Jamaat supporters after Ali’s execution. Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan has warned them against any “unruly” activities.
In 2013, Jamaat supporters staged violent protests, leaving some 500 people dead.
