A nationwide strike called by Bangladesh's fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami to protest against the apex court verdict handing down death sentence to its chief for war crimes largely went unheeded today.
Witnesses and media reports said the 24-hour strike call beginning at 6 am - three days after the final verdict on Motiur Rahman Nizami was given - affected little the public life across the country including the capital Dhaka, that witnessed its regular notorious traffic jams nevertheless.
Schools, offices, shopping malls and financial institutions operated as usual while transport operators said intercity buses, trains and ferries also plied as scheduled.
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"We have kept a sharp vigil but no law and order situation was reported," a police spokesman told reporters here.
Witnesses, however, said Jamaat activists tried to stage brief small street marches at parts of the capital carrying banners but quickly dispersed fearing police action.
Jamaat on its website claimed to have staged demonstrations across the country "against the heinous plot to kill" Nizami, carrying a picture of one such 'protest march' in Dhaka.
Prison officials, meanwhile, said they expect the Supreme Court judgment to reach them anytime. They said they were prepared to execute the order soon after the copy of the judgment reaches them through the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD), which originally had handed down Nizami the capital punishment for committing crimes against humanity siding with the Pakistani troops during 1971 Liberation War.
He was particularly found guilty of systematic killings of more than 450 people alone in his own village home in northwestern Pabna, siding with the Pakistani troops.
"He (Nizami) heard himself the news that the Supreme Court has rejected his final review petition (seeking reversal of its own previous judgment) as he has been provided with a one-band radio at his cell, earmarked for death row convicts," a prison official told PTI, requesting anonymity.
But, he said, the system would require prison authorities to serve him the death warrant formally once the verdict wrapped in a red cloth reached the prison. The prison officials are also obligated to ask the death row convict if he wanted to seek presidential clemency.
73-year-old Nizami lost his last legal effort to save his neck on May 5 when the Court reconfirmed the death penalty to chief of Bangladesh's biggest Islamist party - which opposed the country's 1971 independence from Pakistan, upholding its own previous judgment that had confirmed his death sentence.
Family members met him the next day at suburban Kashimpur Central Jail while prison officials hinted he might be shifted to Dhaka Central Jail for execution. They said simultaneous preparations were underway at Kashimpur jail as well.
Nizami, a former lawmaker and minister in ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia's cabinet, has been in jail since 2010, when he was arrested to be tried 1971 war crimes in the ICT-BD which handed him down death penalty on October 29, 2014 on charges of mass murder, arson, loot and rape.
