Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujaheed is the first to walk gallows among those who held a ministry in the history of Bangladesh.
Along with it, he also became the first among the six war crimes convict, who ever held a ministerial position.
The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) 2 on Wednesday sentenced Mujaheed, the secretary general of Jamaat-e-Islami, for committing crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War.
Mujaheed was the social welfare minister during the last tenure of BNP-led four-party alliance government.
BNP had given Mujaheed the portfolio as part of sharing power with its key election ally, Jamaat.
The war crimes convict took office on October 10, 2001.
In its verdict, the tribunal said five out of seven charges pressed against Mujaheed were proved beyond doubt.
He received death penalties in two cases -- filed for abetting and facilitating killing of intellectuals during the Liberation War and participating in and facilitating the murder of nine Hindu civilians in Faridpur.
Mujaheed contested in the parliamentary elections in 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2008, but he lost in all the elections.
After the independence through a nine-month blood-stained war, Jamaat-e-Islami, the party which allied with Pakistan occupation army during the war, and allegedly responsible for leading genocide and other crimes against humanity, was banned, but, it was rehabilitated after the death of country’s founding president Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975.
Mujaheed was a key leader of infamous al-Badr and one of the masterminds behind killing of the intellectuals on the eve of independence of Bangladesh, according to the prosecution.
Born in 1948 in erstwhile Faridpur, Mujaheed faced seven charges for committing murder, genocide and conspiracy to kill the intellectuals.
According to a Jamaat source, in 1968, Mujaheed became the president of Islami Chhatra Sangha, now Islami Chhatra Shibir, of Faridpur unit. After taking admission to Dhaka University in 1970, he moved to Dhaka and subsequently was selected as the president of the Dhaka Islami Chhatra Sangha.
Later that year, he became the secretary of the East Pakistan Islami Chhatra Sangha, the provincial wing of the Nikhil Pakistan Islami Chhatra Sangha. In October 1971, he was elected president of the East Pakistan Islami Chhatra Sangha.
The prosecution of International Crimes Tribunal says Mujaheed killed 50-60 Hindus in Baidyadangi, Baladangi and Majhidangi areas in Faridpur in the middle of May 1971, and frequently visited Mohammadpur Physical Training Camp where a Pakistani army set up a camp.
He also faces the charge of allegedly killing daily Ittefaq’s former executive editor Sirajuddin Hossain. He ordered to kill noted composer Altaf Mahmud, Shaheed Janani Jahanara Imam’s son Rumi, Jewel, Azad, Badi and Jahir Uddin Jalal on August 30, 1971 at the army camp of the old MP Hostel at Nakhalpara in Dhaka. Bodies of the abovementioned were never found.
Along with torture charges, the senior Jamaat leader is also facing charges for allegedly attending a meeting of the Peace Committee at Kahlilpur Bazaar community centre in Faridpur and later attacking a nearby village Bakchar where nine Hindus were killed. The razakars also raped a girl and compelled the villagers to go to India.