Convicted war criminal Ghulam Azam, 92, finally escaped execution as he died naturally last night at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University.
Mastermind of many notorious war crimes of the 1971 Liberation War, the former Jamaat-e-Islami chief died of cardiac arrest at 10:10pm, BSMMU Director Brig Gen (retd) Abdul Majid Bhuiyan told reporters around 11:55pm coming out from the cardiac Intensive Care Unit. Ghulam Azam had been on life support at the ICU. He had been suffering from several old age complications.
Before the announcement, there was confusion throughout the evening over his health condition. Senior Jail Superintendent of Dhaka Central Jail Md Forman Ali told reporters around 11:30pm that Ghulam was on life support. However, the war criminal’s family members claimed that he had died around 9:30pm.
A file photo shows Gen Tikka Khan, Nurul Amin and Ghulam Azam discussing the formation of anti-Liberation War Peace Committees in Dhaka in April 1971. Gen Tikka khan, then known as the Butcher of Beluchistan, was the governor of East Pakistanin 1971 and Nurul Amin Was a top collaborator
Ghulam Azam, the guru of anti-liberation Jamaat-e-Islami, became the symbol of all war criminals of 1971. He was given 90-year imprisonment by a war crimes tribunal though he deserved death by hanging for committing heinous crimes, the trial court said in its judgement last year.
Led by Shaheed Janani (mother of martyrs) Jahanara Imam in 1992, the first-ever people’s court (a symbolic public trial of Ghulam) in the history of Bangladesh pronounced death penalty for Ghulam at the historic Suhrawardy Udyan in the presence of thousands of people for the offences he had committed during the war.
His execution has been an age-old demand of the pro-liberation citizens.
A three-judge panel at the International Crimes Tribunal 1 on July 15 last year gave its verdict in Ghulam’s case, saying he deserved gallows but was sentenced to 90 years in prison because of his old age.
The decision frustrated millions of justice-seekers of the country and the government on behalf of the victims of 1971 appealed with the Supreme Court for a death sentence.
Ghulam appealed for acquittal challenging the tribunal verdict.
Attorney General Mahbubey Alam last night told the Dhaka Tribune over phone that both the appeals had been pending with the apex court for more than a year but Ghulam passed away yesterday.
On Wednesday, an Appellate Division bench had set December 2 to begin the hearing of the two appeals.
Ghulam was arrested on January 11, 2012 on charges of committing crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. Since then, he had been in the BSMMU prison cell due to old age complications.
Ghulam never apologised for his notorious role against the birth of Bangladesh during the nine-month-long bloody war. He and his party Jamaat tried to justify their role of collaborating with the Pakistani occupation forces that killed 30 lakh Bangalees, raped more than 2.5 lakh women and destroyed properties.
Even after the nine months of blood-letting that took place during the 1971 War of Liberation ended, Ghulam Azam continued to work against the independence of the new state and to carry on a campaign of false propaganda against it.
Just ahead of the denouement of the freedom struggle at the very end of 1971, Ghulam Azam fled to Pakistan on November 22, 1971. As Bangladesh’s independence became imminent, Ghulam Azam campaigned to undo the liberation of Bangladesh under a Pakistani irredentist banner, the “Purbo Pakistan Punoruddhar Committee” (East Pakistan Reclamation Committee) in Pakistan. He strove to mobilise public opinion against Bangladesh until 1973, especially working to hamper recognition of the new state by the world's Muslim countries.
The year 1973 saw Ghulam Azam in London setting up the offices of the “East Pakistan Reclamation Committee,” and publishing an anti-Bangladesh weekly called the “Shonar Bangla.”
His citizen was revoked by Bangladesh on April 18, 1973.
In March 1975, he was in Saudi Arabia lobbying against Bangladesh. He explained 1971 to King Faisal as an act of Hindus taking over East Pakistan. He said copies of the holy Quran had been burnt, mosques had been destroyed and converted into Hindu temples, and Muslims had been killed.
From the credulous, ignorant and cunning he collected funds from the Middle East to build mosques and madrasas.
Then, after the assassination of Bangladesh's founding father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Ghulam Azam returned to Bangladesh on a Pakistani passport on August 11, 1978. He subsequently got back his Bangladeshi citizenship and took up his old position as ameer of the Jamaat-e-Islami. He served in the post until Motiur Rahman Nizami took over from him.
Ghulam Azam was born on November 7, 1922. He studied first at a madrasa and then went on to get a master’s degree from Dhaka University in 1950. He taught at Rangpur Carmichael College between 1950 and 1955.
In 1954, Ghulam Azam joined the Jamaat-e-Islami and served as its secretary from 1957 to 1960. He became ameer of the East Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami in 1969 (at the all-Pakistan level the party was led by Maulana Sayed Abul A’la Maududi). During the Liberation War, the Jamaat and Islami Chhatra Sangha under his leadership opposed the Liberation War.
He played a pivotal role in forming the Shanti (peace) Committee, Razakar, Al Badr, Al Shams paramilitary collaborationist forces. He was an elected member of the national assembly from Tangail in the sham by-elections of 1971.
According to records about the Liberation War, Ghulam Azam started to take an active role in helping Pakistani occupation forces even as the nation launched an armed struggle to free Bangladesh following the massacre which Pakistani military commenced on the night of March 25, 1971.
He was already ameer of the East Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami before the Liberation War broke out. As ameer, he campaigned across Bangladesh and even in Pakistan (then West Pakistan) in order to foil the liberation movement.
“Pakistan is the house of Islam for the world’s Muslims. Therefore, Jamaat activists don’t justify staying alive if Pakistan disintegrates,” said Ghulam Azam in a speech to mobilise his party men and followers against Bangladesh and help the occupation forces, according to a 1971 article in The Daily Sangram, a Jamaat publication.
Ghulam Azam was on the forefront of collaborators with Pakistani armed forces’ attempts to destroy the independence movement.
He is known to have met Pakistani General Tikka Khan ten days after the war started. Tikka was known as the “Butcher of Baluchistan.” He was to earn similar notoriety as the “Butcher of Bangladesh” following the nighttime slaughter of innocent civilians in Dhaka on March 25, 1971.
During the length of the war, Ghulam Azam and his party Jamaat-e-Islami, its student wing Islami Chhatra Sangha (later renamed Islami Chhatra Shibir) played a crucial role alongside their political partners to crush Bangladesh’s independence struggle.
According to newspapers, including the daily Sangram, and books and documents on 1971, Jamaat and its student wing played a key role in forming the Peace Committees and some other collaborating militias, such as the Razakar, al-Badr and al-Shams.
Throughout 1971, Jamaat, its student wing and other collaborator forces actively assisted Pakistani forces in committing war crimes including but not limited to mass killing and rape.
The Pakistani forces and their native collaborators committed genocide and war crimes that left three million people dead and around a quarter million women brutally raped, besides the planned elimination of a large portion of the country's intelligentsia and leadership talent throughout the war and then, pointedly, on December 14, 1971.
Records show that Jamaat formed Razakar and al-Badr forces as a counterweight to the freedom fighters. The Razakar force was established by former secretary general of Jamaat Moulana Abul Kalam Mohammad Yousuf. In the al-Badr there were, among other elements, Islami Chhatra Sangha activists.
In a final attempt to cripple the freedom struggle just before Pakistan’s imminent defeat, occupation forces and local collaborators – mostly Jamaat and its student front members – picked up leading Bangali intellectuals and professionals on December 14 and killed them en masse.
Although Ghulam Azam was the mastermind behind the Jamaat anti-liberation effort, Motiur Rahman Nizami, president of the Islami Chhatra Sangha in 1971, played a vital role in collaborating with the Pakistanis in committing genocide.
Nizami, who is also behind bars on war crimes charges, said in 1971, “Every one of us should assume the role of a Muslim soldier of an Islamic state and through cooperation with the oppressed and by winning their confidence we must kill those who are hatching a conspiracy against Pakistan and Islam,” according to The Daily Sangram quoting Nizami on September 15, 1971.
Ghulam Azam and his cronies in the anti-liberation camp used various epithets against the freedom fighters including, “miscreants”, “Indian agents”, “malaun” (a deeply insulting pejorative used against Hindus), and “infiltrators.”
Ghulam Azam issued a joint statement with other party leaders on April 8, 1971 that is quoted in the book, Genocide ’71: “India is interfering in the internal affairs of East Pakistan. Wherever patriotic Pakistanis see Indian agents or anti-Pakistan elements and infiltrators, they will destroy them.”
Genocide ’71 goes on: “On June 18, on arriving at Lahore airport, Ghulam Azam spoke to journalists, stating that, in order to further improve conditions in East Pakistan, he was going to provide some additional advice to the president [General Yahya Khan].”
However, he refused to elaborate on what sort of advice he was going to give. Regarding the situation in East Pakistan, he said: “The miscreants are still engaged in destructive activities. Their main aim is to create terror and turbulence. These miscreants are being directed by Naxalites and left-wing forces.”
Ghulam Azam met Pakistan’s president Yahya Khan on June 19. After meeting Yahya Khan, he addressed a press conference in Lahore: “The miscreants are still active in East Pakistan. People must be provided with arms to destroy them.”
Addressing Jamaat workers prior to the press conference, Ghulam Azam said: “In order to prevent the disintegration of Pakistan, the armed forces had to be deployed.”
He further said: “The recent tumult in East Pakistan is 10 times greater than the 1857 Revolution in Bengal.”
Speaking at a press conference in Peshawar on August 26, he said, “The armed forces have saved us from the treachery of our enemies and from the evil designs of India. The people of East Pakistan are lending full support to the armed forces in destroying miscreants and infiltrators.”
On November 23, Yahya Khan declared a state of national emergency.
Ghulam Azam welcomed this announcement. He told the press in Lahore: “The best way to defend ourselves is striking at our enemies.” He said in order to restore peace in East Pakistan, each patriotic citizen, each member of the Peace Committees, Razakar, al-Badr, and al-Shams must be armed with modern automatic weapons.
At a meeting in Rawalpindi on November 29, he said:“There is no example in the history of a nation at war surviving without retaliation. Aggression is the best form of defence.”
On December 3, while in Karachi he said: “An East Pakistani should be in charge of the foreign office because it is only an East Pakistani who can cope with the Bangladesh tamasha [the Bangladesh farce].”
After victory on December 16, 1971 Ghulam Azam and others of his ilk found themselves in Pakistan and returned only after the brutal assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members in 1975.
After liberation in 1971, the first issues of newspapers of the new nation carried the government’s decision to ban five communal parties, including the Jamaat-e-Islami, on December 18 with immediate effect.
The banned parties were given the green light to resume politics during the regime of late president Ziaur Rahman.
Genocide ’71 notes that soon after Ghulam Azam, together with a few of his followers went to Saudi Arabia, an advertisement, in the name of a fake organisation, appeared in several Middle Eastern papers. The ad proclaimed: “Mosques are being burnt in East Pakistan, Hindus are killing Muslims and destroying their properties.” On the plea that Islam had to be saved, the ad appealed for contributions.
It said Ghulam Azam, in order to collect funds and to continue his campaign against Bangladesh, visited several countries of the region, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Lebanon. After completing his tour of these areas, he left for London in April 1973.
Even though he came to Dhaka on a three-month visa during the rule of president Ziaur Rahman in 1978, he never left Bangladesh. He became the Jamaat’s undeclared ameer, taking over from alleged war criminal, the late Abbas Ali Khan, who was then acting ameer.
In the early 1990′s, Ghulam Azam was officially declared ameer of Jamaat, while Shaheed Janani Jahanara Imam launched a mass movement demanding the trial of war criminals.
She held an unprecedented People’s Court as a symbolic trial of Ghulam Azam where thousands of people gathered and the court pronounced a verdict to the effect that offences committed by him during the Liberation War deserved capital punishment.
Ghulam Azam’s citizenship came into focus because he came to Bangladesh as a Pakistani national.
In 1991, the BNP formed a government with support from the Jamaat and in 1992 Ghulam Azam filed a case with the High Court to get Bangladeshi citizenship. The government of the day arrested him and put him in jail.
However, after Ghulam Azam acquired Bangladeshi citizenship through a court order in 1994, the government released him from prison.
In 1998, the BNP and Jamaat formed a four-party alliance and Ghulam Azam appeared at a grand public meeting with BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia.
Ghulam Azam left the party’s top post in 2000 and was succeeded by Nizami.
He stayed out of the public eye after 2000 but was back in the spotlight when the war crimes trial process against him started at the end of 2011.