While the world lights candles, puts French flags on the monuments and Social Networks, pours itself in pacifist rhetorics, Bangladesh – with the pragmatism typical of South Asia – is hanging its islamic war criminals.
BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and Jamaat-e-Islami Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid have been hanged for the horrific crimes against humanity they committed in 1971 to thwart the independence of Bangladesh.
Dhaka Central Jail Superintendent Jahangir Kabir confirmed that the two were executed at the same time at 12:55am on Sunday. With Sunday’s execution, Bangladesh has hanged four war crimes convicts so far.
Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Molla was the first to try the South Asiatic pragmatism in December 2013, while another leader of the same party Mohammad Kamaruzzaman was executed in April this 2015.
Chowdhury, 67, and Mujahid, 68, were executed after their petitions for presidential clemency was rejected earlier on Saturday. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court scrapped their petitions for a review of their death sentences.
Copies of the verdicts were published and sent to the jail on Thursday. The same day, the prison authorities read the verdicts out to the convicted war criminals.
Former BNP MP Salauddin Quader, who had also served as a minister during HM Ershad’s regime, was sentenced to death by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) on Oct 1, 2013.
The verdict depicted how he had led the Pakistani army to murder and loot in 1971, and how he had abducted freedom fighters, pro-liberation people, religious and ethnic minorities, taking them to his hilltop residence in Chittagong and torturing them.
Mujahid, a minister in Khaleda Zia’s coalition Cabinet, planned and executed mass murders including those of intellectuals, scientists, academics, journalists, specially targeting no-Muslim and no-fundamentalist Muslim in 1971. On Jul 17, 2013, the International Crimes Tribunal gave him the death sentence after he was proven guilty of mass killings and torture of Hindus during the Liberation War.
Both of them appealed against the verdicts, but the Supreme Court upheld their death sentences.
Surendra Kumar Sinha, the hindu Chief Justice of the ICT, headed the four-member Appellate Division bench that, on June 16, gave its verdict on Mujahid, who was the former commander of Al-Badr, the militia raised by Pakistan to crush the Bengali struggle for independence.
The same bench delivered the verdict on Chowdhury’s appeal against capital punishment on Jul 29. The two full verdicts were published on Sep 30.
The ICT issued the death warrants the next day and sent them to the prison. The warrants were read out to the convicts.
Both convicts then filed a petition for a review of their death sentences, which was rejected by the Chief Justice led appeals bench.
In the meanwhile, militant group Islamic State has threatened more attacks in “Bengal” (ISIS doesn’t recognize Bangladesh as a “Muslim country” for the moderate habits of its population).
In the latest issue of its magazine ‘Dabiq’, the group has a full article titled “The Revival of Jihad in Bengal”.
“The soldiers of the Khilafah will continue to rise and expand in Bengal and their actions will continue,” the article warns. The article claimed responsibility for the murders of Italian aid worker Cesare Tavella and Japanese national Kunio Hoshi.
“A terroristic cell belonging to the soldiers of the Khilafah in Bengal assassinated an Italian ‘crusader’ named Cesare Tavella on the streets of Gulshan in the city of Dhaka … only days later another security cell targeted a Japanese citizen in the northern region of Rangpur,” the ‘Dabiq’ article said.
It claimed that the consequential attacks have caused havoc among the citizens of the crusader nations and their allies living in Bengal and forced their diplomats, tourists and expats to limit their movement and live in a constant state of fear.”
The ‘Dabiq’ article attacks the “secular government of Awami League” and claims it has “twisted facts and played a blame game”. That perhaps refers to the claims by the Bangladesh government that there was no Islamic State presence in the country.
The latest issue of ‘Dabiq’ is full of praise for the attackers of Paris and those who planted the bomb that brought down the Russian airliner in Sinai.
Source article: Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid hanged for 1971 war crimes
For more information: Islamic State threatens more attacks in ‘Bengal’, meaning Bangladesh