DHAKA, Dec. 23 (NsNewsWire) — A former Bangladeshi minister has been sentenced to death  for war crimes during the country’s Liberation War in 1971.
The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT)-1 found the former Minister Syed Mohammed Kaiser guilty of collaborating with Pakistani forces and committing war crimes including mass killings.
The tribunal pronounced the verdict Tuesday afternoon on a crime against humanity case, awarding death sentence to Kaiser, now behind the bar.
The three-member panel of the ICT-2 read the summary of the 484-page verdict at a jam-packed court room in the presence of a huge crowd of people particularly journalists and lawyers amid tightened security measures in and around the tribunal.
He was indicted in February this year with 16 charges of crimes against humanity, including looting, mass killings, arson, rape and forcefully converting people into Muslims during the war.
After the verdict, International Crimes Tribunal prosecutor Rana Dasgupta told reporters that “seven charges, including murder against Kaiser, were proved beyond a reasonable doubt leading to a death sentence” to Kaiser of Bangladesh’s northeastern region.
Kaiser was acquitted on two out of 16 charges.
The 74-year-old has also been awarded imprisonment until death in three charges, life in prison in one and 5 to 10 years in prison in another three.
SM Shahjahan, a defence counsel of former minister, expressed his unhappiness with the verdict said he will move the apex court against the verdict.
Before Bangladesh’s war of independence Kaiser was engaged in politics of Muslim League, which actively opposed the formation of an independent Bangladesh and were thus banned in the country after its Independence in 1971.
After independence Kaiser, who won the 1979 parliamentary polls from a constituency as an independent candidate, joined ex-Prime Minister khaleda Zia’s BNP when it was founded by the country’s first military dictator Ziaur Rahman. He later shifted to HM Ershad’s Jatiya Party and became the Minister for State for Agriculture.
Apart from Kaiser, a number of leaders of BNP and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party is also facing war criems trials.
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami last month challenged the death penalty awarded to him by a war crimes.
Bangladesh on Dec. 12 last year executed Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Molla, convicted of war crimes in 1971.
Both BNP and Jamaat have dismissed the court as a government “show trial” and said it is a domestic set-up without the oversight or involvement of the United Nations.  Enditem