Apparently exalted by the life sentence given by a war crimes tribunal on February 5, Abdul Quader Molla, also known as “Butcher of Mirpur,” may have made the biggest blunder in his political career full of notoriety.
He had remained untouchable for 38 years since the murder of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman even after masterminding the murder of hundreds of innocent people. The senior Jamaat-e-Islami leader did show a victory sign with a haughty smile that brought together the people, who were previously thought to be divided over many issues.
The people, irrespective of their ages and religious and political identities, protested the “lenient” life-term and poured onto the streets across the country demanding death sentence for Quader Molla.
The V-sign triggered the Shahbagh movement that demanded capital punishment for all war criminals and a ban on the politics of Jamaat and its students’ wing Islami Chhatra Shibir.
The observers then predicted that Quader Molla must die for the V-sign he had showed with a lopsided smile.
The experts’ prediction comes true as the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on September 17 handed down capital punishment to Quader Molla, who had run a concentration camp in Mirpur in the capital and committed massacres.
“He should have cried and feigned to have not got justice, to earn people’s sympathy. Instead, he was seen happy and was smiling. This made people extremely angry,” said a Jamaat-leaning journalist. Opposing the Shahbagh movement, the Islamist parties buried their internal political differences and accelerated the Hefazat-e-Islam to counter the Shahbagh activists, say observers. Gradually, Hefazat has become a major political issue in Bangladesh.
Quader Molla, assistant secretary general of Jamaat, was born in Amirabad village under Sadarpur of Faridpur in 1948.
After passing HSC examination, he attended a Qur’an Tafsir and joined the Islami Chhatra Sangha, then student wing of Jamaat. He passed BSc in 1968 from Faridpur Rajendra College.
In 1970, Molla took admission in Dhaka University to complete his Master’s degree in physics. Shortly, he became the president of the university unit of Chhatra Sangha.
After the independence, Quader Molla was arrested in 1972 for his anti-liberation role. But Gen Ziaur Rahman released him from prison in 1975.
He completed a master’s degree on educational administration in 1977 and joined Udayan High School in Dhaka as a part-time teacher.
Quader Molla joined Jamaat in May 1977 and was appointed as the private secretary to then the party chief, Ghulam Azam, the following year.
He joined Bangladesh Rifles Public School and College as a senior teacher in 1978 and started writing columns in Jamaat’s mouthpiece the daily Sangram.
In 1981, he joined the newspaper as its executive editor and became the vice-president of the Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists.
He was elected ameer (chief) of Dhaka city unit of Jamaat in 1985 and the party’s central publicity secretary in 1991. The next year, he was picked up as secretary of Jamaat’s Dhaka city unit and then ameer of the unit.
In 2000, he was appointed as the assistant secretary general of Jamaat central committee.
As the Awami League government initiated the trial of the war criminals in 2010, he was arrested on July 13 the same year on charges of killing 345 people during the War of Independence in 1971.
On May 28 last year, the International Crimes Tribunal framed six charges against Quader Molla for his involvement in murders and mass killings. According to the charges, he “actively participated” in the killings of at least 381 unarmed people in Dhaka’s Mirpur and Keraniganj areas in six different incidents. He also aided the Pakistani occupation army to kill and rape civilians.
The tribunal, set up in line with the International Crimes Tribunal Act, 1973, referred in the judgement that Quader Molla was found guilty of the offences of “crimes against humanity” enumerated in section 3(2) of the Act in five charges brought by the state.
The tribunal awarded him life sentence and 15 years in jail for the war crimes. He was found not guilty in one charge.
The government later amended the ICT Act and inserted a provision to give the prosecution scope to appeal against the tribunal verdicts. Earlier, only the defence could do so. Later, the government filed appeals with the Appellate Division seeking capital punishment as the prosecution could prove three charges “beyond reasonable doubt.”
The Appellate Division in its judgement overruled the sentence and awarded the Jamaat-e-Islami leader death penalty.