Former al-Badr leader ATM Azharul Islam has been sentenced to death for crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War.
The three-member International Crimes Tribunal 1, led by Justice Enayetur Rahim, found him guilty on five charges out of six.
The assistant secretary general of Jamaat-e-Islami was given capital punishment for three charges that included murder and genocide.
He was given 25 years of rigorous imprisonment in one charge and five years in another.
Also a Jamaat leader, ATM Azharul Islam was acquitted in one charge.
In response to the prosecution's appeal for compensation for rape victims, the tribunal agreed that these victims should be adeuqately compensated but the matter was not within its purview as set out by the law.
The tribunal said it is a moral obligation of the nation to ensure honour and dignity for the rape victims.
Urging the government to take necessary measures in this regard, the tribunal said the contribution of these brave women should be recounted from one generation to the other.
Before the judges began reading out the verdict, Chairman Justice Enayetur Rahim said announcing violent programmes as a reaction to the verdict was not expected. “One should not do something that creates mental pressure on the judges.”
He said violence would not change the judgement. For that, the defence ‘should have to go to the Supreme Court’.
He also observed that a few media outlets, both local and international, try to present war crimes verdicts as if these were targeting religious clerics. Presiding judge, Justice Rahim said that the tribunal was brining those to book who had committed crimes against humanity and said such presentation in the media was “inappropriate”.
Azhar was the former president of the Rangpur district unit Islami Chhatra Sangha, the then student wing of the Jamaat.
Click to read the full verdict
Son of late Nazir Hossain and Ramicha Khatun of Batasan Lohanipara in Badarganj upazila of Rangpur, Azhar was a student of class XI at the Rangpur Carmichael College during the war.
Police arrested him on August 22, 2012 from his Moghbazar house in the capital after the tribunal had issued an arrest warrant against him.
The tribunal indicted him on November 12 last year.
