(Reopens FGN 13)

Leading 1971 Liberation War veterans, politicians and cultural activists joined them as they made their makeshift stage symbolically hanging the effigies of major 1971 war crimes suspects. "I may be a minister or anything else...Being a freedom fighter I don't accept the verdict (against Mollah)", Information Minister Hassanul Haque Inu, said, expressing his solidarity with the protesters at the square. Several other senior leaders of ruling Awami League and its allies, including ministers, joined the protesters while organisers said their sit-in vigil would continue with more students joining the protest demanding a harsher sentence. But Jamaat-e-Islami said the war crimes charges against Mollah and eight other senior party leaders including its incumbent chief Matiur Rahman Nizami are bogus and part of a wider political vendetta. The party enforced a nationwide strike and threatened to call indefinite protests if the trials were not halted. A series of protests last week by Jamaat-e-Islami activists had left at least nine people dead. Officials said Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) were deployed to help police maintain public order in the capital city. The tension has erupted as war crimes trials in the two special tribunals were believed to have reached their fag end. A fugitive cleric was handed down the capital punishment in the maiden verdict of one of the tribunals after his trial in absentia last month. While two of the 10 high profile war crime accused belonged to Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the main opposition party, the others were Jamaat-e-Islami leaders. The Jamaat-e-Islami was opposed to Bangladesh's 1971 independence from Pakistan while the party sided with Pakistani troops during the Liberation War when officially three million people were killed. The tribunals were formed by Hasina's government in 2010.