Clashes after Bangladesh hangs Jamaat chief for war crimes

Fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami was hanged on Tuesday midnight, becoming the senior most Islamist to be executed for war crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan

Dhaka: Fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami was hanged on Tuesday midnight, becoming the senior most Islamist to be executed for war crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan.

Security personnel cordon an ambulance carrying the body of Motiur Rahman Nizami. Pic/AP

73-year-old leader of the Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party had refused to seek presidential clemency. Nizami was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail at 12 midnight.

Clashes broke out between activists of Jamaat-e-Islami and police in several Bangladeshi cities yesterday after the execution. Policemen in riot-gear fired rubber bullets when hundreds of Jamaat supporters pelted them with stones in the northwestern city of Rajshahi, where a liberal professor was hacked to death by Islamists near his home last month.

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