1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites

Tribunal convicts top Islamist

February 28, 2013

A war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh has sentenced Islamist leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee to death for crimes against humanity. More than a dozen people have died in clashes following the death sentence.

https://p.dw.com/p/17nUX
Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee (C) is escorted by security personnel as he emerges from the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka on October 3, 2011. Sayedee, a leader in Bangladesh's largest Islamic party, will be tried at the tribunal set up last year to investigate those accused of crimes committed during the nine-month war against Pakistan in the country's 1971 war of independence. Judge Nizamul Huq read out the charges to Sayedee, 71, in a crowded Dhaka courtroom. If found guilty, Sayedee could face death by hanging. AFP PHOTO/ STRINGER (Photo credit should read STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)
Image: Stringer/AFP/Getty Images

The court in the capital Dhaka found the Jamaat-e-Islami vice president guilty of mass killings, rape and other atrocities during Bangladesh's war for independence in 1971. Prosecutors reacted positively to the news on Thursday.

"The verdict has appropriately demonstrated justice. We are happy," state prosecutor Syed Haider Ali told reporters.

"Justice has been done to those who lost their loved ones at the hands of Sayedee," he said.

Delwar Hossain Sayedee is the third and the most senior politician to be convicted by the controversial tribunal.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina established the tribunal in 2010 to carry out investigations into war crimes committed during the armed conflict that claimed an estimated 3 million lives.

Critics, among them the Bangladeshi opposition, have accused the tribunal of bias and of serving as the prime minister's instrument against opponents in the two biggest opposition parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami.

In January, cleric Abul Kalam Azad was convicted in abstentia on charges of torture, rape and genocide in the struggle for independence. At least 10 other people are awaiting trial in similar cases.

Fighting broke out in early 1971 in a struggle for independence from Pakistan. With the aid of India, Bangladesh won its independence nine months later.

Islamist party Jamaat had called for strikes following the death sentence, with initial reports saying at least 14 people had died in clashes in Dhaka.

kms/rg (AP, Reuters)