Dhaka: Bangladeshi authorities will seek the
arrest of a top leader of the country's largest Islamist party
for "crimes against humanity" during the country's 1971
'Liberation War' against Pakistan.
“We have completed the investigations and will hand over
our report to the prosecution cell of the (International
Crimes) Tribunal on Tuesday...to seek arrest of Ghulam Azam,"
Abdul Hannan, the coordinator of the investigation agency,
told reporters on Monday.
The demand for the arrest of Azam, the former
Jamaat-e-Islami chief and ex-provincial minister under the
then Pakistani junta, comes as investigators found "sufficient
proof" against Azam and four other detained Jamaat leaders.
Hannan said the investigators prepared the final reports
on the investigation into allegations against the five as they
gathered sufficient evidence against them.
Azam was the chief of the East Pakistan unit of the
Jamaat, which violently opposed the Liberation War and sided
with the Pakistani troops.
Jamaat's incumbent chief Motiur Rahman Nizami, Secretary
General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and assistant secretaries
general Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Abdul Quader Molla were
arrested last year.
Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, the leader of the Jamaat, a key
ally of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has
been charged with atrocities including genocide, rape and
religious persecution by a three-member International Crimes
Tribunal (ICT) set up last year by the ruling Awami League-led
government to investigate those accused of war crimes
committed during the nine-month bloody conflict.
PTI
First Published: Monday, October 31, 2011, 22:20