Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami angry over hanging of ‘true friend’ Mujahid

Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan has reacted sharply to the execution of Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid for war crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War, describing him as a ‘true friend of Pakistan’.

The party’s chief Sirajul Huq had goaded Islamabad, trying to stall the trial of those who had pledged their support to Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported Huq’s angry reaction at a rally in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province following Muhajid’s hanging.

The former Bangladesh Jamaat secretary general, who was a cohort of the Pakistan Army during the 1971 Liberation War, was given the death sentence by the Supreme Court for having masterminded the killing of Bengali intellectuals shortly before the war ended.

The Pakistan Jamaat chief said: “It’s a black day today because a true friend of Pakistan has been hanged in Dhaka.”

The war crimes tribunal that had first sentenced Mujahid to death had observed that he had formed the Al-Badr force to protect the integrity of Pakistan, formed on the basis of religion.

He, along with leaders and activists of the Islami Chhatra Sangha, had led the group to kill intellectuals.

Even before Mujahid’s execution, Huq had issued a call to save him from the clutches of an ‘India-backed’ government in Bangladesh.

The Jamaat in Pakistan had expressed similar reactions after the execution of Bangladesh Jamaat leaders Abdul Quader Molla and Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, similarly sentenced to death for war crimes.

Its reaction was identical when the guru of all war criminals, Ghulam Azam, was sentenced to imprisonment until death.

Huq said such men were being punished in the name of war crimes by the present Awami-League-led government for their allegiance to Pakistan.

“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid is killing those people who believed in the ideology of Pakistan and who opposed the separation of East Pakistan,” he said.

The Jamaat-e-Islami in East Pakistan, led by Ghulam Azam in 1971, was a branch of Pakistan Jamaat.

Besides opposing the Liberation War, it had formed the Al-Badr, led by Mujahid, with the leaders and activists of the then student wing, the Islami Chhatra Sangha.

Although Jamaat was initially banned in the newly emerged independent and secular country, it was soon rehabilitated as Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh under a changed political scenario that followed the assassination of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The party has not yet tendered any apology for its role in 1971. Instead, its leaders maintain with a fair measure of arrogance that its position then was ‘correct’.

Mujahid used to claim there were no war criminals in Bangladesh.

Sirajul Huq also criticised Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and its army chief Gen Raheel Sharif for their silence despite the successive hanging of those who had backed the Pakistani military in 1971.

The Dawn report quoted Huq as saying Nawaz Sharif could go and live in India or Bangladesh after the prime minister’s assertion that the people had aspired for a ‘liberal Pakistan’.

There has been official expression of concern over Mujahid’s execution as well.

Bangladesh summoned Pakistan’s high commissioner in Dhaka on Monday to lodge its strong protest after the country’s foreign ministry had issued a statement the day before.

Earlier, the Pakistani Parliament, believed to be under pressure from the Jamaat, had adopted a proposal denouncing the hanging of Abdul Quader Molla, media reports had claimed.