{"id":40250,"date":"2013-07-15T13:30:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-15T10:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=40250"},"modified":"2013-07-15T14:01:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-15T11:01:09","slug":"top-islamist-leader-in-bangladesh-jailed-for-90-years-40250","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/top-islamist-leader-in-bangladesh-jailed-for-90-years-40250\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Islamist leader in Bangladesh jailed for 90 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ghulam-Azam-Jailed-Bangladesh\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

A tribunal court Monday sentenced top Islamist leader and former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh Ghulam Azam for 90 years in jail for allegedly war-time atrocities during 1971 Bangladesh independence war.<\/h1>\n

Dhaka, July 15\/Nationalturk \u2013 The top Islamist leader and former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh Ghulam Azam was Monday sentenced for 90 years in jail by a tribunal court for allegedly engineering war-time atrocities during 1971 Bangladesh independence war.<\/p>\n

The International Crimes Tribunal-1 announced today that \u00a091-year-old Ghulam Azam was found guilty by the war crimes tribunal of all five categories of crime \u2013 incitement, conspiracy, planning, abetment and failure to prevent murder.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first two charges he was given 20 years, for the third and fourth 20 years each and for the fifth another 30 years,\u201d a judgement delivered by International Crimes Tribunal (ICJ) reads.<\/p>\n

ICJ is not an international court but is the local court set up by Bangladesh to try people for committing violence against its own people during war of independence in 1971. \u00a0The Bangladesh tribunal is not endorsed by the United Nations. The New York-based Human Rights Watch group has said its procedures fall short of international standards.<\/p>\n

The presiding judge of ICJ Justice A T M Fazle Kabir said Azam will serve consecutively.<\/p>\n

Azam took part in killings: Court<\/h2>\n

Another judge Justice Jahangir Hossain, read out a part of the 243-page verdict, saying \u201cAzam in effect took part in the killing by giving ‘negative signals’ to sub-ordinates. That\u2019s why he is ‘criminally liable’ and found guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the court \u00a0stopped short of awarding death penalty to the 91-year-old high profile Jamaat leader in view of his old age.<\/p>\n

A prosecution official said Azam will spend the rest of his life in jail. \u201cHe will be in jail until he dies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Heavy security measures were taken in and around the courtroom, where the verdict was announced. Police and other security personnel were deployed in strength in sensitive areas in capital Dhaka and other places, where Jamaat-e-Islami has a huge following.<\/p>\n

Jamaat had called national-wide strike today against the court verdict. The strike was more effective in pro-Jamaat areas with Jamaat workers taking to roads and staging anti-government demonstrations. They also clashed with police and paramilitary personnel at many places.<\/p>\n

According to prosecution, Azam was among the key people who pioneered anti-Liberation efforts in 1971 colluding with the Pakistani military junta of that time. He is widely perceived to have been among the core group of right-wing backers of the Pakistani Army, who came out strongly in support of a united Pakistan and mobilised infamous social platforms centrally.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was instrumental in setting up the infamous Peace Committee at the national level. The Razakars, an auxiliary force set up mainly to actively thwart the liberation forces, are said to have been mobilised through the Peace Committees across Bangladesh,\u201d they alleged.<\/p>\n

Verdict is travesty of Justice: Jamaat<\/h3>\n

Ghulam Azam\u2019s counsel termed the judgement as not appropriate. \u201cWe would appeal against verdict in the Supreme Court,\u201d they said<\/p>\n

The chief Jamaat counsel, Abdur Razzaq, also the party\u2019s Assistant Secretary General, said<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a travesty of justice. We will most certainly appeal against this decision,\u201d Jamaat\u2019s assistant secretary general Abdur Razzaq.<\/p>\n

The Jamaat leader Azam is in detention. He was arrested on January 11 last year.<\/p>\n

After Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in December 1971, Azam fled the country. He stayed in London for seven years and after the assassination of Bangladesh’s founding father \u00a0Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, he returned to country in 1978 during BNP founder Ziaur Rahman’s rule. Azam retired from active politics in 1999. His party remains a key ally of the main opposition BNP, which has expressed its anger and resentment over the verdicts against Jamaat leaders and termed it as \u201cpolitical vendetta\u201d.<\/p>\n

Write your comments and thoughts below<\/em><\/p>\n

Faiz Ahmad \/ NationalTurk Bangladesh News<\/strong><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tribunal court Monday sentenced top Islamist leader and former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh Ghulam Azam for 90 years in jail for allegedly war-time atrocities during 1971 Bangladesh independence war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,80,63,1,118,85,101,14],"tags":[55280,55277,3006,55290,55274,55288,55276,43007,13830,55281,55275,55283,636,55285,55284,45554,55289,55273,55287,55278,8975,55286,39801,55282,55279,55291],"class_list":["post-40250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-general","category-hot","category-media-news","category-politics","category-world","tag-1971-bangladesh-independence-war","tag-90-years-in-jail","tag-bangladesh","tag-bnp-founder","tag-former-chief","tag-founding-father-of-bangladesh","tag-ghulam-azam","tag-guilty","tag-human-rights-watch","tag-international-crimes-tribunal","tag-jamaat-e-islami-bangladesh","tag-justice-a-t-m-fazle-kabir-justice-jahangir-hossain","tag-pakistan","tag-pakistani-army","tag-pakistani-military","tag-sentenced","tag-sheikh-mujibur-rahman","tag-top-islamist-leader","tag-travesty-of-justice","tag-tribunal-court","tag-united-nations","tag-united-pakistan","tag-verdict","tag-war-crimes-tribunal","tag-war-time-atrocities","tag-ziaur-rahman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}