The activists of Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chattra Shibir have vandalised 30 vehicles, torched several others, and blasted 20 crude bombs in the capital’s Sobhanbagh and Mirpur areas protesting the execution of its leader Muhammad Kamaruzzaman.
The Jamaat-Shibir activists brought out a protest rally from Sobhanbagh mosque area and vandalised the vehicles, including passenger buses and private cars, and blasted crude bombs around 9:30am Sunday, our photographer Mahmud Hossain Opu reported from the scene.
Meanwhile, the party activists also brought out a protest rally at Mirpur 2 and torched several vehicles around 9:30am.
Earlier, condemned war criminal Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, a key organiser of the infamous al-Badr force in Sherpur during the 1971 Liberation War, was executed at the Dhaka Central Jail on Saturday night.
The Jamaat-e-Islami senior assistant secretary general was given capital punishment for the massacre at Sherpur’s Sohagpur village – widely now known as “Bidhoba Palli” or the village of widows – where at least 164 civilians had been killed and around 170 women raped on July 25, 1971.
The International Crimes Tribunal on May 9, 2013 awarded Kamaruzzaman death penalty on two out of five charges, including the Sohagpur massacre, proved against him. He was sentenced to a life term for two charges and 10 years’ imprisonment in another.
The appeal case was disposed of by the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division on November 3 last year upholding death sentence in the Sohagpur massacre, while the full text of the judgement was released on February 18. The tribunal the following day issued the death warrant for the war criminal.
He filed the review petition on March 5. The four-member Appellate Division bench heard arguments from both the defence and the state on April 5. The defence had prayed to the court to commute Kamaruzzaman’s death penalty to life-term imprisonment. The court delivered its judgement the following day.
