Jamaat-e-Islami’s Mujahid first Bangladesh minister to get death penalty from top court for war crimes

Jamaat-e-Islami leader Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid is the first minister to be sentenced to death by Bangladesh’s top court.

A four-strong appeals bench, led by Chief Justice SK Sinha, upheld the sentence in a war crimes case on Tuesday.

A special tribunal ordered the former Al-Badr commander to walk the gallows on July 17, 2013 for killing intellectuals during the 1971 Liberation War.

The then additional attorney general MK Rahman and then deputy inspector general of prisons Golam Haider had said Mujahid was the first minister to be sentenced to death.

Although he never won in any general election, BNP chief Khaleda Zia made him a cabinet minister in 2001.

After him, four former ministers were convicted of war crimes.

Of them, Abdul Alim, Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and Motiur Rahman Nizami were full ministers, while Syed Mohammed Kaiser was a state minister.

Alim was a minister in Gen Ziaur Rahman’s regime, while Chowdhury and Kaiser served under military ruler HM Ershad.

Chowdhury was also an adviser to former prime minister Khaleda in the BNP-led coalition government.

The BNP leader was sentenced to death in 2013, while Alim got life in prison.

Last year, Nizami and Kaiser got the death penalty for war crimes.

But even before that, Jamaat chief Nizami had been sentenced to death in the sensational 10-truck Chittagong arms haul case.

He served as the agriculture and industries minister in Khaleda’s 2001-6 cabinet. Mujahid was the social welfare minister in that cabinet as a technocrat.

Mujahid took the helm of Al-Badr militia as the provincial chief of the Jamaat’s erstwhile student front, Islami Chhatra Sangha.

The Al-Badr killed intellectuals with Pakistan Army’s help during the 1971 war.                      

Mujahid was in hiding for five years after independence and re-emerged in politics after the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975.