The execution of two top Bangladeshi hardline Islamist leaders convicted of warcrimes committed during the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan was a "matter of time only", the country's Attorney General said today.
Attorney General Mahbubey Alam's assertions came as family members of the two death row convicts -- 67-year-old Jamaat-e- Islami Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and 66-year-old BNP leader Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury -- met them at Dhaka Central Jail where they were expected to be hanged.
The two were transferred there overnight from the high- security Kashimpur Central Jail after the Supreme Court yesterday rejected pleas to review their death penalties.
"The hours of waiting (for the final verdict) have ended... The verdicts will reach the jail soon (through the tribunal) and their execution is now a matter of time only," Alam said.
Alam, however, said the convicts could now seek a presidential pardon as per their "constitutional right" but unlike the ordinary condemned prisoners the authorities do not need to wait for seven more days giving them time to decide over seeking clemency.
"The ordinary law says the death row convicts must get seven days time to take the decision, but these two condemned war criminals were tried under a special law which mentioned nothing about the clemency," the top law officer said.
Mujahid and Chowdhury were senior ministers in Khaleda Zia's BNP-led coalition government with fundamentalist Jamaat being its key partner.
"The judges signed the texts of their judgment... We are now sending the copies to the International Crimes Tribunal in line with the procedure as it originally handed down the verdicts," a Supreme Court spokesman told reporters.
Previously, two warcrimes convicts - Jamaat leaders Abdul Kader Mollah and Mohammad Quamaruzzaman - have been executed since Bangladesh in 2010 initiated the process to expose the Bengali-speaking collaborators of Pakistan Army for crimes against humanity during the 1971 liberation war.
None of them had sought the presidential clemency.
Talking to newsmen after meeting Mujaheed in jail, his son Ali Ahsan Mabru said his father would "send a special prayer to the president, but it will not be a mercy petition."
During the previous such judgments against several of their leaders, Jamaat spearheaded a violent campaign leaving dozens of people dead last year in their strongholds.
