Bangladesh's top court has sentenced a senior Islamist opposition leader to death for mass murder during the country's 1971 liberation war against Pakistan, SIA reports quoting Aljazeera.
Abdul Quader Molla, 65, the fourth-highest-ranked leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, is the first politician to be found guilty by the country's Supreme Court after it overturned an appeal to acquit him of all charges.
"The court enhanced his life sentence to the death penalty," prosecutor Mohammad Ali said on Tuesday.
Lawyers said a five-strong Appellate Division bench threw away the defence appeal for acquittal of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s Assistant Secretary General.
The defence lawyer Tajul Islam said: "We are stunned by the verdict. This is the first time in South Asian judicial history that a trial court sentence has been enhanced by a Supreme Court."
Jamaat-e-Islami has called for a 48-hour general strike to start on Wednesday. The original life sentence delivered in February triggered widespread protests including by secular protesters angry over the apparent leniency of the sentence.
Tens of thousands of secularists massed at a square in Dhaka for weeks, demanding the execution of Molla, describing him as the notorious Butcher of Mirpur, responsible for the murder of hundreds of innocent villagers in a Dhaka suburb during the war.
The protests forced parliament to change the war crimes laws, allowing the prosecution to appeal against the verdict and seek the death penalty in the Supreme Court.
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