Dhaka: Bangladesh’s top court cleared the way on Thursday for the execution of a senior Islamist leader charged with war crimes, just two days after he was given a dramatic last-minute reprieve from hanging.
Chief Justice Muzammel Hussain “dismissed” Abdul Qader Mulla’s appeal for a final review of his death sentence, removing his last legal option against execution, which could now be carried out as early as midnight on Thursday.
“There is now no legal bar to execute him,” Attorney-General Mahbubey Alam told AFP in the Supreme Court after the decision.
Mulla had been set on Tuesday night to become the first person put to death for massacres committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war, following a series of verdicts by a special war crimes court that have sparked deadly protests.
But a judge stayed the hanging of Mulla, a leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, just 90 minutes before his scheduled execution at a jail in Dhaka, amid international concern over the fairness of his and other trials for alleged war crimes.
A key opposition official, Mulla, 65, was found to have been a leader of a pro-Pakistan militia which fought against the country’s independence and killed some of Bangladesh’s top professors, doctors, writers and journalists.
Mulla was convicted of rape, murder and mass murder, including the killing of more than 350 unarmed Bengali civilians.
Since Wednesday, the Supreme Court has heard an appeal on whether Mulla could seek a review of the death sentence, with his lawyers arguing that he had “a constitutional right” to do so.
However Attorney-General Alam told the court that there was “no scope for a review in war crimes cases”.
Hundreds of secular protesters who have been massing at Shahbagh square in the capital since Tuesday night erupted in celebration at hearing the latest court decision, shouting slogans that called for the execution of all war criminals.
Mulla’s lawyers protested the verdict, saying the death penalty was awarded based on evidence given by only one prosecution witness, who had also earlier given two different versions of the same event.
“We’re unhappy. He did not get justice,” defence lawyer Khandaker Mahbub Hussain told reporters outside the court.
Mulla is one of five Islamist leaders and politicians sentenced to death by the war crimes court. The verdicts sparked protests in the volatile country between police and government and some opposition supporters, who claim the trials are a witchhunt against their leaders.
Some 231 people have been killed in the street protests since January when the verdicts were first handed down. In the latest deaths, two opposition supporters were shot dead on Thursday following clashes in the southern town of Laxmipur.
New York-based Human Rights Watch and two UN Special Rapporteurs have warned that by executing Mulla without the death sentence being reviewed, the country could be breaking international law.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay also wrote to Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina seeking an eleventh-hour stay of the execution, saying the trial did not meet stringent international standards for imposition of the death penalty.
But deputy law minister Quamrul Islam rejected the criticism on Thursday, saying “did they stop the execution of Saddam Hussein?”
“What logic do they have to stop the (Mulla’s) execution?” Islam told AFP.
Three other Jamaat leaders and one main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party lawmaker have also been sentenced to death for atrocities during the war.
Hasina’s government says three million people died in the war, many at the hands of pro-Pakistan militias led by Jamaat leaders who opposed secession from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on religious grounds.
Independent researchers put the death toll between 300,000 and 500,000 people.
Bangladesh regularly carries out the death sentence by hanging.
But Mulla’s death would be the most high-profile execution since January 2010, when five ex-army officers were put to death over the assassination of the nation’s founding leader Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father.
