Accessibility links

Breaking News

Bangladesh Court Upholds Islamist Leader's Death Sentence


Mir Quashem Ali, a senior leader of the Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami shows victory sign as he enters a police van after a special tribunal sentenced him to death in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Nov. 2, 2014.
Mir Quashem Ali, a senior leader of the Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami shows victory sign as he enters a police van after a special tribunal sentenced him to death in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Nov. 2, 2014.

Bangladesh's highest court has rejected an appeal by a senior Islamist leader, upholding his death sentence for war crimes committed during the country's 1971 war for independence with Pakistan.

Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha announced the decision Tuesday against Mir Quasem Ali.

The 63-year-old is a leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party and was convicted in 2014 on eight charges that included the abduction of a young man and his killing in a torture cell.

Bangladesh says local collaborators and Pakistani soldiers killed 3 million people during the fight for independence, which Jamaat-e-Islami opposed.

Several other Islamist leaders have already been executed for war crimes. Jamaat-e-Islami and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party have criticized the government's war crimes tribunal as politically motivated.

  • 16x9 Image

    VOA News

    The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.

XS
SM
MD
LG