The Pakistan government has expressed sympathy for Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Molla, the first ever war criminal to face capital punishment for committing crimes against humanity during Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971.
“Till the very end before the creation of Bangladesh, he [Molla] remained supporter of a united Pakistan and today every Pakistani is saddened and grieved on his death,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said in a statement on Friday, according to Pakistan’s influential daily the Dawn.
Quader Molla was undoubtedly hanged because of his loyalty with Pakistan in 1971, Nesar Ali said. “But with this unfortunate incident, an effort is made to revive old wounds of the past. In reality, whenever any country regrettably falls victim to a civil war, then all sides in the conflict resort to violence.” Jamaat Assistant Secretary General Quader Molla, well-known as “Mirpurer Koshai” (Butcher of Mirpur), was executed on Thursday, after nearly 42 years of bloodstained independence.
The Pakistan foreign ministry in a statement issued on Friday said: “While it is not Pakistan’s policy to interfere in the affairs of any country, we have noted the concerns raised by the international community and human rights organisations on the way recent trials have been conducted which have added to the current instability in Bangladesh.”
Meanwhile, Pakistani Jamaat leader at the National Assembly Sahibzada Tariqullah the same day asked the House to pass a condemnatory resolution and adjourn the session for the day in memory of Quader Molla.
Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq gave time until Monday to Inter-Provincial Coordination Minister Riaz Hussain Pirzada, when Tariqullah sought opinion of the foreign ministry and other political parties about the execution.
In the statement, Interior Minister Nisar Ali said the Bangladesh government should have considered the “greater national interest” and shown “farsightedness” and “goodness” instead.
He said it was necessary for “peace and brotherhood” that strategy of “tolerating” each other should be adopted in the larger national interest. “It would have been better if the Bangladeshi government had shown farsightedness, bigheartedness and magnanimity instead of opening old wounds.”
Soon after the execution on Thursday, the official Facebook page of Pakistan Jamaat said it just got one more Shaheed (martyr) in the form of Quader Molla.
Earlier, when Jamaat guru Ghulam Azam was sentenced to 90 years’ imprisonment, Pakistan Jamaat stated on its website: “Chief of our Bangladesh branch has been punished.”
After the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court overruled the tribunal’s life-term sentence for Quader Molla on September 17, Pakistan Jamaat chief Syed Munawar Hasan said the verdict had been a “ploy” of Sheikh Hasina’s administration to “remove pro-Pakistan politicians from its path in order to avert a clear defeat in the next elections.”
He also said it was “most unfortunate” that the Pakistan government, instead of raising a voice against the “excesses” of the Hasina administration against pro-Pakistan parties, called it an internal affair of Bangladesh, thus giving a licence to Bangladesh government to continue the “excesses.”
Jamaat activists demonstrated on the streets in Karachi protesting the jail term while party chief Syed Munawar Hasan in a Twitter message said: “It is tragic to know that the fake tribunal has sentenced Prof Ghulam Azam for 90 years in prison without any legitimate proof and reason.”
Though the offenses amounted to death penalty, the International Crimes Tribunal gave Ghulam Azam, the chief of erstwhile East Pakistan unit of Jamaat, jail sentence on July 15 considering his age and ill health.
Neither the Pakistan government nor the Bangladesh Jamaat has apologised for their role during Bangladesh’s War of Independence.
Syed Haider Farooq Maudoodi, a son of Jamaat founder Syed Abul A’la Maudoodi, while visiting Dhaka last October, told the Dhaka Tribune in an exclusive interview, that Jamaat in Bangladesh and Pakistan, even after 42 years of Bangladesh’s independence, were “just the left and right hands of the same person, there is only one head controlling the both.”
