Former minister for Jatiya Party becomes 15th person to be convicted of atrocities in series of war-crimes trials.
![Jamaat supporters clashed with police after the group's leaders were sentenced to death last year [Reuters]](https://bangladeshchronicle.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/20141167823625734_20.jpg)
Syed Mohammad Kaiser became the 15th person to be convicted of atrocities by the International Crimes Tribunal, which found him guilty of heading an armed group that rounded up and killed about 150 people in the nine-month conflict.
The 73-year-old Kaiser, who uses a wheelchair, did not react as the judge read out the verdict and said he would be “hanged by the neck until his death”.
Lawyers for Kaiser, a former minister with the Jatiya Party which forms part of Bangladesh’s ruling coalition, have rejected the charges and say they will appeal.
The government of Sheikh Hasina Wazed created the International Crimes Tribunal, a domestic court, in 2010.
It has mostly focused on the trials of the leaders of the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, although a former minister of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party has also been sentenced to hang.
Prosecutors said Kaiser had raised a pro-Pakistani militia that carried out a series of murders, rapes and looting.
Judge Obaidul Hassan said the prosecution proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that Kaiser had established the militia, which created a “reign of terror”.
Mohammad Ali, the prosecutor, said Kaiser led his armed group and Pakistani forces to attack 22 villages in the Brahmanbaria area near the border with India on November 15, 1971.
“At least 108 unarmed Hindu civilians were killed. Scores of their houses were looted and set on fire,” he said.
Kaiser joined the centre-right Jatiya Party in the 1980s and was elected to parliament.
He was made state minister for agriculture by Hussain Muhammad Ershad, a former military ruler.
Kaiser’s conviction is unlikely to prompt the kind of protests that plunged the country into deadly unrest last year, after Jamaat’s leaders were sentenced to death for their roles in the war.
Thousands of Islamists clashed with police in nationwide protests that left about 500 people dead.
The BNP and Jamaat have called the trials politically motivated, aimed at eliminating opposition leaders rather than rendering justice.
Rights groups have said the trials fall short of international standards and lack any foreign oversight.
The government maintains they are needed to heal the wounds of the war, which it says left three million people dead.
Independent researchers dispute the figure.
Source: Aljazeera
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There is a huge conspiracy going around to make Bangladesh a fascist society calling aloud that it is becoming a militant society.
It may be the last chance for restoring democracy and people’s voting right in Bangladesh. If this government, acquiring power through a questionable election, does not listen to the popular demand, the only option remaining would be to go for all out movement. Sitting idle as neutral people may not be an option with reference to the following:
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”
― John F. Kennedy
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
― Desmond Tutu