Pakistan’s Home Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan expressed concern over the death sentence of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami, Pakistan newspaper Dawn reported on Saturday.
In a statement, he said although what happened in Bangladesh was that country’s internal matter, Pakistan could not remain divorced from references to 1971 and its aftermath.
Nizami was sentenced to death on October 29 for committing crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War. Nisar Ali Khan said it was highly unfortunate that almost 45 years after that tragic chain of events, the Bangladesh government still seemed to be living in the past and totally ignoring the time-tested virtue of forgiveness and forgetting.
He said one failed to understand why the Bangladesh government was hell-bent on digging the graves of the past and reopening old wounds.
He said it seemed obvious to any independent observer that the recent events in Bangladesh were a manifestation of serious political violations which were being inflicted on Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami for events before the independence of Bangladesh.
The minister said he was deeply saddened to receive this shocking news and believed that the government of Bangladesh had misused the process of law as a political tool against the Jamaat leader.
