DHAKA: Bangladesh authorities on Saturday hanged a top Islamist leader for overseeing a massacre during the nation’s 1971 independence war against Pakistan, officials said.

“Mohammad Kamaruzzaman has been executed at 10.30pm Bangladesh time,” law and justice minister Anisul Huq said.

Four specially trained convicts took him to a makeshift gallows set up near his prison cell and hanged him using a rope, in line with Bangladeshi jail procedure. He was declared dead by a magistrate and a government doctor.

Kamaruzzaman, the third most senior figure in the Jamaat-i-Islami party, was convicted of abduction, torture and mass murder as one of the leaders of a pro-Pakistan militia that killed thousands of people during Bangladesh’s bloody independence struggle.

Hundreds of secular supporters burst into cheers and made victory signs as news of the hanging was announced at Shabagh square in central Dhaka where they gathered to celebrate the death of a man they called a “war butcher”.

Kamaruzzaman, 62, became the second Islamist to be hanged for atrocities during the 1971 war of independence against Pakistan. Abdul Quader Molla, the fourth-highest ranked leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami party, was hanged in December 2013.

Police said security was tightened outside the capital’s main jail and across the country ahead of the hanging.

“We are alert to prevent any violence or subversive acts,” Dhaka police spokesman Jahangir Alam Sarker said.

Kamaruzzaman was originally expected to be hanged in the early hours of Saturday morning, but the execution was postponed at the last minute, with no official reason given.

Bangladesh went ahead with the execution despite last-minute pleas by the United Nations, the European Union and human rights organisations to halt the hanging. The UN said the trial did not meet “fair international” standards.

Just hours before the execution, members of Kamaruzzaman’s family visited him at the prison, surrounded by tight security.

“We found him in good health and not worried about his fate at all,” his eldest son Hasan Iqbal said after seeing his father.

“In his last comments, he regretted that he did not see the victory of Islamic movement in Bangladesh. But he was confident that it would be victorious here one day,” he said.

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2015

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