From Anisur Rahman
Dhaka

Preparations were today underway in Bangladesh for the execution of chief of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami Motiur Rahman Nizami, a day after the Supreme Court rejected his plea to review the death penalty for war crimes, with family members meeting him in prison for the last time.

“Seven members of his family including his wife, two sons, daughter visited him,” jailor Nasir Uddin of suburban high-security Kashimpur Central Jail told PTI over phone.

He said the close relatives were allowed to stay for 40 minutes with the top leader of Bangladesh’s biggest Islamist party which was opposed to the country’s 1971 independence from Pakistan.

Another senior official of the prisons department said the 73-year-old war crimes convict was expected to be executed at Dhaka Central Jail but simultaneous preparations were underway at Kashimpur jail as well.

“The execution is likely to take place in Dhaka Central Jail, but we asked officials at Kashimpur prison to make alternative preparations to carry out the process in two hours’ notice, if required,” said the official, requesting anonymity.

The Jamaat chief could be executed any time after he yesterday exhausted his last legal opportunity to overturn the death penalty, with the Supreme Court rejecting his petition to review the death sentence it earlier upheld for committing crimes against humanity during 1971 Liberation War, siding with the Pakistani troops.

He was particularly found guilty of systematic killings of more than 450 people alone in his own village home in northwestern Pabna, siding with the Pakistani troops.

Nizami, a former lawmaker and minister in ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia’s cabinet, has been in jail since 2010, when he was arrested to be tried for 1971 war crimes in a special tribunal which handed him down death penalty on October 29, 2014 on charges of mass murder, arson, loot and rape.

Nizami, who headed the infamous Al-Badr special militia force and Jamaat’s student wing in 1971, challenged the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) verdict before the Supreme Court which upheld the original judgment on January 6 this year.

In his last legal efforts to save the neck, Nizami then sought to get the judgment reviewed by the apex court itself, which yesterday dismissed his last appeal, clearing the way for him to walk to the gallows.

Jail officials, however, declined to give details about when they were planning to hang the war crimes convict but said that in line with the procedure, Nizami would be asked if he preferred to seek presidential mercy, acknowledging his guilt, as his last ditch effort to evade the noose.

Attorney General Mahbub-ey Alam earlier said that unlike ordinary death row convicts, Nizami could be hanged anytime as set by the government after the final verdict of the Supreme Court though he would get the chance to seek the presidential clemency.

President Abdul Hamid, however, has earlier rejected two such prayers by 1971 war crimes convicts – Nizami’s top aide in 1971 and Jamaat’s secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujaheed and Salauddin Quader Chowdhury of ex-premier Khaleda Zia’s BNP.

They were hanged on the night of November 21 last year, immediately after the president rejected their mercy petitions which they had filed earlier on that very day.

Bangladesh in 2010 initiated the process to try top Pakistani collaborators who acted as perpetrators of 1971 atrocities, constituting high-powered special tribunals and an investigating agency.

Nizami is one of the last remaining top perpetrators of crimes against humanity as Bangladesh so far saw execution of four war crimes convicts since the war crimes trial process began six years ago.

“It would be a failure of justice, unless he is handed down the death penalty,” the ICT-BD commented as it handed down Nizami the capital punishment in October 2014, convicting him of “superior responsibility” as Al-Badr militia forces chief in 1971.

The so-called elite militia force is blamed for running a systematic campaign to massacre a large number of top intelligentsia just ahead of Bangladesh’s victory.

PTI