Jamaat-e-Islami has called a 24-hour countrywide hartal, protesting the Supreme Court verdict that upheld the death penalty to their leader Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujaheed for war crimes during the 1971 Liberation War.
The party announced the hartal on its website on Tuesday, immediately after the verdict was handed down.
The hartal would be enforced from 6am Wednesday to 6am Thursday, said the press statement by acting Jamaat Ameer Makbul Ahmed.
In the statement, the Jamaat chief expressed his disappointment over the apex court judgement and claimed that all charges against the Jamaat leader were false, baseless and conspiratorial.
Earlier in the day, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty to war criminal Mujaheed, who had led the systematic killing of intellectuals at the fag end of the 1971 Liberation War as the chief of the notorious al-Badr death squad.
However, the apex court commuted his death penalty to life-term imprisonment for killing people in the Bakchar area of Faridpur in 1971. It also acquitted Mujaheed from the charge for abducting and killing Serajuddin Hossain.
Mujaheed led al-Badr, formed with members of Jamaat’s student wing, was an auxiliary force of the Pakistani occupation forces during the war.
On July 17, 2013, Tribunal 2 sentenced the 67-year-old Jamaat secretary general to death after it found him guilty on five out of seven charges brought against him by the prosecution.
He was given death penalty on two charges – for abetting and facilitating the killing of intellectuals and participating in and facilitating the murder of nine Hindu civilians in Faridpur.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
