Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan has threatened Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that continuing the war crimes trials would bring her downfall.
It issued the veiled threat in a statement on Wednesday expressing indignation at the death verdict of its Bangladesh unit chief Motiur Rahman Nizami for war crimes.
It also called upon Islamabad to take actions against Bangladesh.
Nizami led the notorious Al-Badr militia to help the Pakistan occupation army to suppress Bengalis’ struggle for freedom during the Liberation War. The outfit spearheaded execution of intellectuals at the closing stages of the war.
He served Khaleda Zia’s cabinet as a minister during the BNP-Jamaat coalition’s 2001-06 term. The tribunal said giving the war criminal Cabinet berth was a “slap on the faces of the martyrs”.
Suspected war criminals were put on trial after Hasina’s government set up a special tribunal in 2010.
Most of the convicts are current and former leaders of the Jamaat who played leading roles in thwarting Bangladesh’s birth.
Jamaat claims the government is using the tribunals as a “tool to eliminate its top brass” and that it “falls short of international standards”.
Its key ally BNP’s chief Khaleda, too, dubbed the trials “a farce”.
The US on Thursday said it supported the ongoing war crimes trial in Bangladesh.
State Department’s spokesperson Jen Psaki said they “understand the importance of this process in closing a painful chapter in Bangladesh’s history”.
“…We support bringing to justice those who committed atrocities in the 1971 war,” she said replying to a question at a regular media call in Washington.
The Pakistan Jamaat in the statement published on its website dubbed tribunals a “fake court” and Nizami a “totally innocent person”.
Its chief Sirajul Haq and Secretary General Liaqat Baloch claimed the death verdict was the “height of tyranny”.
Jamaat’s Pakistan wing issued statement each time a leader of its Bangladesh chapter was convicted of war crimes.
Haq criticised Pakistan for maintaining an “unfortunate criminal silence” over the convictions of “patriotic Pakistanis who had sided with the Pak army”.
Prime Minister Hasina was given a veiled threat.
“Such measures could not prolong the rule of (Hasina),” Haq added.
Source: Bd news24
