Tycoon sentenced to death for war crimes
Print Edition
A media tycoon who is a key figure in Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party was sentenced to death yesterday for war crimes, just days after its leader was ordered hanged for similar offences.
The war crimes court found wealthy businessman Mir Quasem Ali, an official of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, guilty of 10 charges including murder and abduction during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence against Pakistan.
Ali, 63, stood up and loudly protested as the chief judge announced the sentence in a packed court.
“It’s a motivated judgement,” he said, adding that it was handed down on the government’s orders.
Ali, who owns a television station and newspaper aligned with Jamaat, was convicted of running a militia torture cell that carried out killings including that of a young independence fighter.
“The country and the people affected have finally got justice. Mir Quasem Ali has been sentenced to death for the murder of a teenage freedom fighter,” prosecutor Ziad Al Malum said.
“The young boy was abducted and his body was thrown in the Karnaphuli river,” he said.
Jamaat’s top leader Motiur Rahman Nizami was last Wednesday sentenced to death for heading a pro-Pakistan militia in 1971, a decision that sparked protests by supporters.
Jamaat called a nationwide strike following Nizami’s verdict. The strike was still in force yesterday, with many schools and businesses closed and traffic thin.
The party plans a new strike on Thursday to protest Ali’s death sentence.
Similar judgements against other Jamaat officials last year plunged the country into one of its worst crises. Tens of thousands of Jamaat activists clashed with police in various protests that left some 500 people dead.
Ali, also a shipping and real estate tycoon, became the eighth Islamist sentenced to death by the war crimes court, set up by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government in 2010.
Ali, a former leader of Jamaat’s powerful student wing, helped revive the party by setting up charities, businesses and trusts linked to it after it was allowed to operate in the late 1970s.
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