Delawar Hossain Sayedee, a key Jamaat-e-Islami leader, will have to spend the rest of his life in jail for crimes against humanity committed during Bangladesh’s Liberation War.
A five-member bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha on Monday upheld its previous order of imprisonment until death. The court also dismissed the state’s pleas seeking death sentence.
The International Crimes Tribunal-1 sentenced Sayedee to death in February 2014. Later his death sentence was commuted to imprisonment until death after he moved an appeal with the Supreme Court. In January last year, the government filed a review petition with the apex court, seeking death penalty.
ADVERTISEMENT
Sayedee is one of the key leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami that sided with the Pakistani Army during the 1971 Liberation War. A firebrand orator, he is both popular and criticised for his controversial sermons on religion, secularism, politics and women. He is also accused of instigating militants to carry out a machete attack on secular writers and free thinkers.
Being the first case in the International Crimes tribunal that was set up in 2010, the Syedee case faced great difficulties. There were efforts to to derail the trial, including abduction of a key prosecution witnesses, hacking of personal computers of ICT judges and illegal interception of their personal communications, and murder of a key prosecution witness.
The militant cadres of Jamaat-Shibir carried out mass scale violent attacks on religious minorities, Awami League supporters and law enforcers across the country after the tribunal verdict in 2013, that killed over 100 people and damaged properties.
ADVERTISEMENT