Family meets Kamaruzzaman one last time before the war criminal’s execution

Mohammad Kamaruzzaman’s family has left Dhaka Central Jail after meeting for one last time the former Al-Badr commander facing death.

Kamal Talukderbdnews24.com
Published : 11 April 2015, 07:55 AM
Updated : 11 April 2015, 02:46 PM

Two vans carrying 23 members of the senior Jamaat-e-Islami leader’s family
reached the jail premises around 4pm Saturday.

But 20 were allowed to enter the prison, officials told bdnews24.com. They left around 5:20pm after being inside for little more than an hour.

Some of them flashed ‘victory signs’ before pushing through a crowd of reporters and law enforcers to enter the prison.

Jail authorities called around 1pm asking the family to meet him between 4pm and 5pm, his son Hasan Iqbal told bdnews24.com.

Kamaruzzaman decided not to beg the president for mercy, State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters on Saturday.

His lawyers had said he would ‘take time to think’ about the option.

Two district magistrates met him on Friday to ask him about seeking mercy.

The International Crimes Tribunal on May 9, 2013 sentenced the Al-Badr commander from Mymensingh to death for atrocities committed during the 1971 Liberation War.

A year later, the Appellate Division confirmed the sentence, describing his crimes as being “worse than the Nazis”.

He was handed death for killing 120 men and raping women from village Sohaghpur at Sherpur’s Nalitabarhi on July 25, 1971.

Then, on last Monday, Chief Justice SK Sinha-led appellate court rejected his plea for a review of the death penalty.

The family had met Kamaruzzaman that evening after he lost the final legal battle.

Those who had met Kamaruzzaman that day were his wife Nurunnahar, sons Iqbal Hasan, Hasan Imam and Ahmed Hasan, daughter Atia Nur, brother Kamrul Islam and his wife Afia Nur, brother-in-law ‘Rumman’, nephew ‘Arman’, nieces ‘Arifa’ and ‘Molly’, Rokhsana Jebin, ‘Jitu’, ‘Moon’, ‘Moni’ and a relative named ‘Beauty’.

Seven more family members came to meet Kamaruzzaman on Saturday afternoon.