DHAKA, Oct 31: The head of Bangladesh’s army-backed interim government said on Wednesday no group which opposed the country’s 1971 war of liberation from Pakistan should be allowed to take part in coming national elections.

“But the opponents of the liberation war should be identified first,” Fakhruddin Ahmed told a meeting of newspaper editors at his office

The interim administration which took over government in January after weeks of street violence imposed a state of emergency and launched a crackdown on corruption ahead of elections now planned for late next year.

Fakhruddin, a former central bank governor, suggested that “aggrieved people or former freedom fighters should file cases against the opponents” who had perpetrated war crimes including killing and raping along with Pakistani occupation forces. Fakhruddin said filing such cases with police was essential “to identify war criminals”.

One political party, Jamaat-i-Islami, was banned immediately after Bangladesh won its independence for opposing the liberation war and actively assisting the Pakistani occupation army in 1971.

Jamaat was allowed back into active politics seven years later under the government headed by Gen Ziaur Rahman.

The party, an ally of Begum Khaleda Zia who headed the most recent civilian government until its term expired last October, has now triggered a new controversy, stating publicly that the independence war was “in fact a civil war and (that) Bangladesh has had no war criminals”.

Jamaat secretary-general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, a minister in Khaleda’s government, said after meeting Election Commission officials last week that the historically cited numbers of 3 million deaths and 200,000 women raped during the war were “concocted and untrue”.

Most political parties and war veterans have now demanded that Jamaat be banned from contesting the coming election.

Khaleda and Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League are in jail facing charges of corruption and abuse of power.—Reuters