Dhaka: The Supreme Court appellate division on Tuesday upheld its previous verdict on condemned war criminal Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid, a Jamaat-e-Islami leader, rejecting his plea for reviewing death penalty for his crimes against humanity during the War of Independence in 1971.

A four-member bench headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinhadismissed the review petition of the Jamaat leader.

‘The death penalty handed down to him has been upheld,’ prosecutor Soumya Reza told AFP, adding Mujahid could be hanged within months.

‘No appeal was filed from the state side against tribunal’s verdict to Mujahid. The state argued for upholding the death sentence to the Jamaat leader by the tribunal,’ Attorney General Mahbu-e-Alam said earlier.

Jamaat, called the strike for Wednesday, branding the trial of its general secretary ‘farcical’.

‘Mujahid is a victim of the government’s conspiracy,’ Jamaat’s acting chief Moqbul Ahmed said in a statement.

Mujahid was found guilty in 2013 of leading Al Badr, a notorious pro-Pakistani militia that carried out ‘exterminations’ of Bangladeshi intellectuals including top writers, journalists and professors towards the end of the nine-month war.

Prosecutors said Mujahid now faces the gallows within months unless his case is reviewed by the same court or he is granted clemency by the president.

‘Souls of the war martyrs can finally now rest in peace after today's verdict,’ reported AFP quoting prosecutor Mokhlesur Rahman Badal.

The court has swiftly dismissed previous reviews of two other senior Jamaat officials on death row, leading to their execution, the latest in April this year.

Those leaders also declined to seek clemency from the president, saying they did not recognise Hasina's government.

Bodies found dumped

When it became clear that Pakistan was losing the war, dozens of intellectuals were abducted from their homes and murdered in December 1971 in the most gruesome chapter of the conflict.

Their bodies were found blindfolded with their hands tied and dumped in a marsh on the outskirts of the capital.

Defence lawyers have said Mujahid’s name was not in the list of Al Badr commanders or activists that was published by the post-independence government.  

‘We’ll seek a review of the Supreme Court judgement,’ said defence lawyer Shishir Manir.

Mujahid was a senior minister from 2001-2006 in a previous government led by then prime minister Khaleda Zia. He was an influential leader in the opposition alliance until his arrest in 2011.  

International rights groups, legal experts and the opposition have criticised the tribunal, saying its procedures fall short of international standards.

Hasina has rejected any criticism of the International Crimes Tribunal’s trials, saying they were needed to heal the wounds of the war.

Mujahid filed the appeal on 11 August 2013 against the tribunal’s verdict that awarded him death sentence on 17 July in the same year for his crimes against humanity in 1971.

The International Crimes Tribunal 2 found that five out of seven charges against 65-year-old Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid - including the murder of intellectuals and Hindus - were proved beyond doubt.

The SC has so far disposed of three appeals of Jamaat-e-Islami assistant secretary general Abdul Qader Molla, Nayebe Ameer Delwar Hossain Saydee, and it’s another assistant secretary general Muhammad Kamaruzzaman.

The Supreme Court, on 17 September 2013, revised the sentence to death penalty of Qader Molla following an appeal by the prosecution that considered the International Crimes Tribunal 2 sentence too light. He was later hanged on 12 December 2013.

In its second verdict on appeal, the SC also revised the ICT verdict awarding death sentence to Saydee reducing it to life term imprisonment on 17 September 2014.

The apex court in its third appeal verdict, upheld the death sentence awarded to Kamaruzzaman on 6 April this year. The death sentence was later executed on 11 April.