Jamaat ideologue and war criminal Ghulam Azam passed away late last night in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University. He was 92.
Azam was shifted to CICU from the prsion cell in the hospital and put on life support at around 9 p.m., but his condition took a turn for the worse, and died a little more than an hour later.ned.
He had in the hospital's prison cell since January 11, 2012, and had been suffering from kidney problems, lungs infection and old-age complications.
BSMMU director (hospital) Brigadier General (retired) Abdul Majid Bhuiyan officially announced Ghulam Azam's death at around midnight.
Senior Jail Superintendent Farman Ali was quoted by the Daily Star, as saying that the body would be sent to the hospital for an autopsy after a magistrate conducts an inquest. Thereafter, it will be handed over to family members today, he added.
The paper, however, quoted Tajul Islam, a counsel for Ghulam Azam, as saying that an application has been placed before the deputy commissioner of Dhaka to handover the body without an autopsy.
Tajul also revealed that the former Jamaat chief had expressed a wish that his namaz-e-janaza be conducted by Motiur Rahman Nizami or Delawar Hossain Sayedee.
Born on November 7, 1922, Ghulam Azam studied in a madrasa first and then obtained a master's degree from Dhaka University in 1950. He was a teacher at Rangpur Carmichael College between 1950 and 1955.
He joined the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1954 and served as its secretary from 1957 to 1960. He became ameer of the East Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami in 1969.
He spent the majority of the post-1971 period, championing the cause of a complete Pakistan through his Jamaat-e-Islami party, its student wing Islami Chhatra Sangha (later renamed Islami Chhatra Shibir), and played a key role in forming the Peace Committees and other collaborator forces, such as Razakar, Al-Badr and Al-Shams.
He campaigned across Bangladesh and even in Pakistan (then West Pakistan) against the Liberation War.
Forty-two years after liberation, a panel of judges sentenced Ghulam Azam to 90 years in prison for masterminding crimes against humanity, genocide and other wartime offences in 1971.
On July 15, last year, the International Crimes Tribunal-1 had handed down the life sentence after founding him guilty of the offences of conspiracy, planning, incitement, complicity in crimes against humanity and genocide and murders during the liberation war.
Both the government and the defence challenged the tribunal verdict, and the appeals hearing were scheduled to start on December 2. But, after Azam's death, the appeals would be "infructuous or ineffective" as per the law.
The judges said Azam deserved the gallows but he was given prison terms due to his old age.
