Bangladesh Sentences Islamic Party Leader to Death for War crimes in 1971 War
By Mourad Anouar
Morocco News Tribune
Oklahoma, U.S.A|A special tribunal in Bangladesh has convicted the leader of an Islamic political party of committing war crimes during the Bangladesh’s 1971 independence from Pakistan and has sentenced him to death.
According to the verdict which was announced Thursday by tribunal judge ATM Fazle Kabir, Islamic Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee was found guilty of committing mass killings, rape and atrocities during the nine-month war against Pakistan.
“The man who is accused in this case is well-known. His sermons draw crowds of devotees from far-off places,” said Kabir.
“We have to look 40 years back now to know the person against whom the verdict is being delivered. Then Sayedee was known by the name of Delu at Pirozpur.”
Delawar Hossain Sayedee, 71, is a Bangladeshi Islamist politician, and a former Member of Parliament in the National Assembly of Bangladesh from 1996 to 2008. In 2011, he was indicted with 20 counts of crimes against humanity by the International War Crimes Tribunal (Bangladesh) on October 4, 2011during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war.