Dhaka: A former Bangladeshi minister was on Tuesday sentenced to death by a special tribunal for committing crimes against humanity by siding with Pakistani troops during the country’s 1971 liberation war.
The three-member panel of International Crimes Tribunal-2 handed down the capital punishment to 73-year-old Syed Mohammad Kaisar as he appeared on the dock under tight security escorts from Dhaka Central Jail.
“He (Kaisar) shall be hanged by neck until he is dead,” chairman of the panel Justice Obaidul Hassan pronounced saying 14 out of 16 charges against him was proved beyond doubt during the trial. A minister in the cabinet of former military ruler HM Ershad, whose Jatiya Party is ally of ruling Awami League, Kaisar had constituted a special militia force to carryout atrocities in north-eastern Habiganj, his hometown, and neighbouring Brahmanbaria.
He had named the infamous group after him – the Kaisar Bahini. The charges against the convict included massacre, rape, extortion, arson and torture.
The court sentenced him to death on seven charges and life sentence and other terms in the rest of the proven charges.
Under one of the major charges Kaisar led a joint group of official Razakar militia force, pro-Pakistani so-called peace Committee and members of his own Kaisar Bahini to assist the Pakistani troops in an attack on civilians in 20 villages when over 100 people were killed on November 15, 1971.
A total of 32 witnesses, one being a “war child” who was born as a result of rape of a woman, testified against Kaisar while another of the witnesses was a member of the Kaisar Bahini.
According to the charges, more than 150 unarmed people were killed and two women raped by the Kaisar Bahini. A local leader of the then Muslim League, Kaisar fled the country just before the surrender of the Pakistani forces and took refuge in London.
He returned home in 1975 and in 1979 he was elected to parliament as an independent candidate and then joined the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former military ruler turned politician slain President Ziaur Rahman.
During the subsequent Ershad regime, Kaisar abandoned BNP and became a leader of newly formed Jatiya Party and made his room as the junior minister for agriculture.
Kaiser’s son Syed Galib Ahmed and two brothers were present in the courtroom but they declined to talk to media while his lawyers said they would appeal against the verdict before the Supreme Court. “He (Kaisar) deserved it,” Law Minister Anisul Huq said.
The prosecution lawyers said the verdict had a special feature because for the first time the tribunal directed the government to take initiatives to rehabilitate the children who were born as a result of rapes during the war.
This was the 14th verdict delivered by two high-powered tribunals since Bangladesh initiated the trial of top collaborators of Pakistani forces, most of them being stalwarts of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami, which was opposed to Bangladesh’s independence.
In the 14 cases, the tribunals tried 15 people and handed down death penalty to 12 people including Kaisar and imprisonment until death to the rests. Officially, three million people were killed in the war by the Pakistani army and their Bengali-speaking collaborators during the war. (PTI)