Mobarak Hossain, an expelled leader of Bangladesh's ruling Awami League party, was sentenced to death today by a special tribunal for murdering 33 civilians and committing war crimes during the 1971 independence war against Pakistan.
"He shall be hanged by neck until he is dead," ruled a three-member panel of judges of International Crimes Tribunal-2 headed by Justice M Enayetur Rahim.
The tribunal said it found the former militia commander guilty in two of the five charges brought against him.
64-year-old Hossain, clad in a white dress, was handed death for the killing of 33 civilians at his home district in central Brahmanbaria district on August 22, 1971.
Hossain was sentenced to life imprisonment in another charge of killing while the prosecution brought against him the charges of murder, abduction, confinement, torture and looting homes of their valuables.
He was the commander of the local unit of Razakar, a dreaded militia force comprising Bengali-speaking collaborators which Pakistanis formed as their auxiliary troops in 1971.
Hossain was associated with fundamentalist Jamaat-e- Islami, which was opposed to Bangladesh's independence.
After the defeat of Pakistan, he managed to join Awami League, which led the liberation war.
So far, Hossain is the only Awami League leader to face trial for war crimes.
The party expelled him two years ago when his role in 1971 resurfaced after tribunal initiated the process for the trial of the war criminals.
Ahead of his expulsion, Hossain served as the Awami League organising secretary of a union parishad, the lowest administrative tier at grassroots, for 16 years until 2012.
The death penalty to the militia commander was celebrated at Shahbagh by supporters of the pro-democracy Ganajagaran Mancha.
Today's verdict came two weeks after the same tribunal sentenced to death a fugitive leader of Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Zahid Hossain Khokon, for 1971 crimes against humanity.
Khokon too was a local Jamaat leader in 1971 and later joined BNP and subsequently became the mayor of his hometown of southwestern Nagarkanda.
Since Bangladesh launched the war crimes trial, the two special tribunals, set up by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's secular government in 2010, have handed down death penalties to 10 people and sentenced two others to life imprisonment until their death.
Only one of them, Jamaat's joint secretary general Abdul Quader Mollah so far was executed while two of the convicts were now living in the US and Britain and the other cases were pending before the Supreme Court for review.
