Top Bangladeshi opposition leader sentenced to death for war crimes

A tribunal in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka issued death penalty verdict Tuesday against a top main opposition party leader for war crimes including mass killings during the country's war of independence 42 years ago. The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT)-1 pronounced the verdict Tuesday afternoon in Dhaka on a crime against humanity case, awarding death sentence to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, who is now behind the bars. This was the first time that the ICT delivered verdict on war crimes charges against a member of the parliament and leader of the BNP headed by ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, a rival of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Justice ATM Fazle Kabir, head judge of ICT-1, announced that nine out of 23 charges, which include mass killings, murder, genocide and conspiracy to kill intellectuals during the country's Liberation War in 1971, against the 64-year-old leader were proved beyond reasonable doubt. The three-member panel of the ICT-1 read the summary of the 172- page verdict at a jam-packed court room in the presence of a huge crowd of people particularly journalists and lawyers amid tightened security in and around the tribunal. Security has been beefed up in places in Dhaka and Chittagong, some 242 km southeast of the capital city. Paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) troops have been deployed to thwart any untoward incident after the verdict against Chowdhury, member of BNP's Standing Committee, the highest policy-making body of the party. This is the seventh war crimes case verdict in Bangladesh. Six current and former leaders of BNP's key ally Bangladesh Jamaat-e- Islami party had earlier been sentenced to either death or life imprisonment for crimes against humanity linked to the country's war of independence. In April last year Chowdhury was indicted on the charges of genocide, murders, abductions, torture in confinement, loot, arson attacks and complicity in other atrocities committed in Chittagong in 1971. In his closing arguments in the case, Defense counsel AKM Fakhrul Islam claimed that the prosecution failed to prove the charges and expressed the hope that his client would be acquitted. Son of the then Convention Muslim League party leader Fazlul Qader Chowdhury, Salauddin Quader Chowdhury was elected MP from different constituencies in Chittagong since 1979. Chowdhury's father, who actively opposed the creation of independent Bangladesh and allegedly committed war crimes, died at jail when his trial was going on. Fazlul Qader Chowdhury was also a Speaker of Pakistan National Assembly and Acting President of Pakistan from time to time before the independence of Bangladesh. Salauddin Quader Chowdhury was a lawmaker and minister in General Hussain Mohammad Ershad's government in the 1980s. He quit former military strongman's Jatiya Party in the second half of the 1980s and founded his own party. In 1996, Chowdhury and his National Democratic Party took part in the then opposition Bangladesh Awami League party-led movement against the then BNP government that saw the introduction of non- party caretaker government for holding parliamentary polls. Later, he joined BNP and was elected to parliament on its tickets. Both BNP and Jamaat have dismissed the court as a government " show trial" and said it is a domestic set-up without the oversight or involvement of the United Nations. The latest verdict came about two weeks after the country's apex court awarded death penalty to a high-ranking Jamaat leader for war crimes including mass killings. After returning to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, established the first tribunal in March 2010, almost 40 years after the 1971 fight for independence from Pakistan to castigate those committed crimes against humanity during the nine-month war.