Golam Azam waves to the media after a court sent him to jail in Dhaka yesterday
A Bangladeshi tribunal sent yesterday Golam Azam, former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami party and country’s top Islamist leader, to jail to await trial on charges of war crimes, his attorneys and court officials said.
The 90-year-old leader is facing trial for helping the Pakistani army during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence, when, according to government records, more than 3mn people were killed and thousands of women raped in what was then
East Pakistan.
Jamaat, Bangladesh’s biggest Islamic political party, opposed Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan and helped the Pakistani army in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.
“He has been arrested after the International Crimes Tribunal rejected his (anticipatory) bail petition,” state prosecutor Syed Haider Ali said. “He was the mastermind of all crimes against humanity during 1971.”
Both parties have dismissed the court as a government “show trial”, while the New York-based group Human Rights Watch has said legal procedures used by the tribunal fall short of
international standards.
Azam’s lawyer Abdur Razzak slammed the arrest, which came after he was called to the
tribunal.
“We don’t know yet the charges against him, the order was not correct. He is also very old. Still, our bail petition was rejected,” said Razzak.
Five other top Jamaat leaders including its current chief, Moulana Motiur Rahman Nizami, have been in jail for months on similar charges, which they deny.
The war crime tribunal on Monday asked Azam to appear before it yesterday or face arrest. The tribunal turned downed his bail petition yesterday and ordered him to be taken to jail.
Razzak said the denial of bail was a violation of Azam’s human rights. His next hearing will be on February 15.
Pakistani forces were defeated in the 1971 war and East Pakistan broke away from what was then known as West Pakistan.
The tribunal was set up last year and wants to wrap up investigations into all of the accused, as trying war criminals was an election pledge of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who returned to power in January 2009.
Jamaat and its close ally, the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, say the tribunal takes orders from the government. The government
rejects that. Reuters/AFP