Dhaka: Bangladesh on Thursday executed fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Qader Mulla after the Supreme Court reconfirmed his capital punishment over crimes against humanity in 1971.
“He has been executed at 10.01pm [8.01 UAE time],” a jail official told the media as he emerged from inside Dhaka Central Jail.
Security was tight around the prison complex as the execution was carried out two hours ahead of what was speculated, and shortly after 65-year old Mulla’s family members saw him for the last time.
Jail sources earlier said 60-year-old inmate, Shahjahan Mian, carried out the execution as the chief hangman with assistance of five other hangmen serving long prison terms.
TV channels showed an ambulance entering the jail presumably to carry the body from the prison to Mulla’s village home in western Faridpur.
Dhaka’s district magistrate, civil surgeon and others witnessed the execution in line with the rules alongside the senior prison officials while an Islamic cleric administered a special prayer when the convict sought God’s mercy while taking his last bath.
Witnesses said Mulla’s two sons, four daughters and wife were his last visitors. They entered the jail around 6.25pm and came out around 7.05pm.
Stalled process
Mulla is the first war crimes convict to be executed after a trial since Bangladesh’s 1971 independence, despite the beginning of a judicial process to bring to justice Bengali-speaking perpetrators of war crimes.
The process was stalled after a change of the political scene following the August 15, 1975 coup that killed the nation’s founding father, Bangabandhu Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, along with most of his family members. The process was resumed by the incumbent government as part of its 2008 election pledges.
The apex court earlier on Thursday rejected Mulla’s plea for a review, removing the last barrier for his hanging, two days after his execution was halted at the last minute under a court order.
Court officials said all the five judges on the bench of the Appellate Division unanimously delivered the decision as the defence lawyers exhausted their last legal effort to save Mulla.
The apex court’s chamber judge Justice Syed Mahmoud Hossain on Tuesday night halted at the eleventh hour Mulla’s hanging after his lawyers approached him at his residence claiming the prison authorities were executing their client without following legal procedures.
Atrocities carried out by Mulla when he sided with Pakistani troops during the Liberation War earned him the name “Butcher of Mirpur” in the capital where he was said to have led the infamous Al Badr militia force to slaughter a large number of people including children.
