Supporters and activists of the ruling Awami League Party on Monday hailed Bangladesh Supreme Court's verdict of upholding the death penalty for Islamist leader Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, who had earlier been convicted for war crimes.
In May last year, a special war crimes tribunal found Kamaruzzaman, 62, an assistant secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, guilty of genocide and torture of unarmed civilians during the 1971 war.
The tribunals have delivered death sentences for two Jamaat leaders, including its party chief and former minister, Motiur Rahman Nizami, over the past week.
Defence lawyers earlier in the day said they would file a petition for a review but state prosecutors said it was not an option.
"The whole country is quite happy and I am a part of that because we saw that after 43 years of our independence, the nation could bring the war criminals under trial which was the long awaited desire of the country, especially the country who lost three million people and 2 million tortured women in 1971," said a professor at Dhaka university, Binita Sen.
In September, the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment for another top Islamist leader, Delawar Hossain Sayedee, convicted for similar crimes.
Also Read
An Islamist politician was hanged in December, the first war crimes execution in Bangladesh, after the top court overturned a life sentence imposed by the tribunals.
The tribunals have angered Islamists who call them a politically motivated bid to persecute the leadership of Jamaat and weaken the opposition.
Violent protests over the trials are one of the main challenges facing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who opened an inquiry into war crimes in 2010.
More than 200 people were killed in clashes last year, most of them Islamist party activists and security force members.
International human rights groups say the tribunal's procedures fall short of international standards. The government denies such charges.
What was East Pakistan at the end of British rule in 1947 broke away into independent Bangladesh in 1971 after a war between Bangladeshi nationalists, backed by India, and Pakistani forces. About three million people were killed in the war.
Some factions in Bangladesh, including the Jamaat, opposed the break with Pakistan, but the party denies accusations that its leaders committed murder, rape and torture.