Bangladesh's Supreme Court today upheld the death sentence given to a top fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami leader for mass murder and war crimes during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, the third verdict within a week that went against the party's stalwarts.
The four-member Appellate Division of the Supreme Court headed by Justice S K Sinha pronounced the verdict four months after 62-year-old Muhammad Quamaruzzaman filed an appeal against the death penalty handed down to him in May last year by a special tribunal.
The decision comes after within a week Jamaat chief Matiur Rahman Nizami and top leader of the party Mir Quasem Ali were both sentenced to death for atrocities committed during the 1971 independence war against Pakistan.
"(The tribunal verdict is) upheld," pronounced Sinha.
Court officials said one of the four judges preferred life imprisonment for Quamaruzzaman.
The Supreme Court upheld the tribunal judgment for the major charge of killing 164 people at a village at his home district in northern Sherpur, which was later renamed as "Bidhoba Palli" or "village of widows" as virtually all adult married men were killed by the infamous Al-Badr militia forces led by Quamruzzaman during the war.
The apex court, however, commuted the highest penalty to life term imprisonment for another charge.
Quamruzzaman, an assistant secretary general of Jamaat, is the third war crimes convict whose appeal was disposed off by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court earlier reduced the capital punishment handed down by the tribunal to life imprisonment in one of the cases and in another case the apex court upheld the death penalty of another convict.
Quamruzzaman was the leader of now defunct Islami Chhatra Sangha, the then student front of Jamaat, which was opposed to Bangladesh's 1971 independence from Pakistan.
War crimes verdicts and sentences have triggered deadly protests across Bangladesh in the past. Jamaat called a nationwide 48-hour strike from Wednesday morning to protest the court's decision.
In line with the normal practice of the Supreme Court, the convict was not present during the appeal hearing or the pronouncing of the verdict with lawyers of both sides presenting their arguments in the apex court.
Prosecution lawyers, immediately after the verdict, said Quamaruzzaman could now only seek presidential clemency to overturn the verdict as under the law he has no other legal option to get the judgment reviewed.
But defence lawyers said their client had rights to get the verdict reviewed by the apex court itself as it was his constitutional right.
