(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Bangladesh's war crimes court yesterday sentenced a leading Islamist to death for rape, mass murder and genocide during the country's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
ATM Azharul Islam became the 16th person and the 11th Islamist to be convicted of atrocities by the International Crimes Tribunal, which found him guilty of being a key member of a notorious pro-Pakistan militia.
The 62-year-old is the assistant secretary general of the nation's largest Islamist party, the Jamaat-e Islami.
"I am innocent!" he shouted as the presiding judge Enayetur Rahim ordered him to be "hanged by the neck" for the genocide of more than 1,200 people in a flood plain in the northern district of Rangpur. "No doubt, it was mass murder," Judge Rahim told a packed court, which was blanketed by tight security.
Those killed included hundreds of Hindus - a minority in mainly Muslim Pakistan - in one of the worst episodes of the nine-month war.
The conflict ended with the former East Pakistan seceding from the regime in Islamabad, with the help of Indian troops, and becoming Bangladesh.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina created the controversial tribunal, a domestic court with no international or United Nations oversight, in 2010.
It has mostly focused on the trials of the Jamaat leaders who opposed the break-up of Pakistan and saw the liberation war by Bengalis as a conspiracy by majority-Hindu India.
The tribunal has also sentenced to death a former minister of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Secular protesters staged impromptu "victory" marches in the capital Dhaka and in Rangpur to hail the latest verdict.
But defence lawyer Tajul Islam rejected the charges against Islam and said his team planned to appeal the verdict in the Supreme Court. "Azharul Islam was a 19-year-old student during the war and in no way was involved in war crime. The charges against him are false and fabricated," the lawyer said.
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