B’desh hangs top Jamaat leader for ’71 war crimes

Dhaka: Bangladesh’s fundamentalist Jamaat-e- Islami leader and media tycoon Mir Quasem Ali was hanged on Saturday night, the sixth Islamist to be executed for war crimes committed during the country’s 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan.
Ali, 63, widely considered as the top financier of the Jamaat, was hanged at the high-security Kashimpur Central Jail on the outskirts of the capital. “He was hanged at 10.35PM,” Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told PTI.
Ali’s execution came after he refused to seek presidential clemency on Friday.
Minutes after the hanging, a jail official came out and told reporters that doctors were carrying out an autopsy on Ali’s body.
Prison officials had earlier said Ali’s body would be brought to his village home at northern Manikganj district for burial.
Hundreds of Liberation War veterans and war crimes trial campaigners rallied at Dhaka’s Shahbagh Square and rejoiced at the execution of the last of the high-profile perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
The presidential mercy was the last resort for Ali, who was the infamous pro-Pakistan Al-Badr militia’s third most important figure, to save his neck after the Supreme Court rejected his final review petition on Tuesday.
Ali, who owned several business houses and media outlets including a now suspended TV channel, was a central executive council member of Jamaat-e-Islami.
He was convicted of running Al Badr’s torture cell that carried out killings. Three million people were said to have been massacred in the war by the Pakistani army and their local collaborators. (PTI)