War criminal Mir Quasem will not beg president for mercy, says prisons official

Death-row war criminal Mir Quasem Ali is not begging the president to spare his life by repenting for the atrocities he had committed as an Al-Badr commander during the 1971 Liberation War.

Speaking to benews24.com around 4:15pm on Friday, Prashanta Kumar Banik, Superintendent of Central Jail-2 at Gazipur's Kashimpur, said: "We asked him in the afternoon about his decision. He said he will not seek presidential clemency."

With his last legal recourse, the review petition, rejected by the Appellate Division on Tuesday, the Jamaat-e-Islami baron could have only gambled on presidential pardon to save his neck.

The top financier of the Jamaat was handed down the maximum penalty by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in 2014.

The Supreme Court in March this year upheld the verdict, following which he sought a review of the judgment.

On Tuesday evening, the full review verdict was published and sent to the prison authorities via the ICT.

The business tycoon had sought time after the prison officials read out the verdict to him the following morning. Since then, he had been requesting time to make a decision about the mercy petition.

But with him deciding not to file the clemency petition, there is no more bar to hanging him.

Though the government is yet to announce the time, date and place for his execution, Kashimpur prison Jailer Nasir Uddin had said earlier that they were fully prepared to carry out the sentence.

According to the rules, the 63-year old's family will be allowed to meet him for the last time before he is executed.

The wartime "terror of Chittagong" had rapidly risen through the ranks to change his own and the Jamaat's financial and political fortunes with extraordinary shrewdness and went on to bankroll the party.

The ICT verdict delivered on Nov 2, 2014, cited the crimes against humanity Mir Quasem committed as the Chittagong area commander of the Al-Badr, a militia formed with members of the Islami Chhatra Sangha to help the Pakistan Army crush the freedom struggle of the Bengalis.

Mir Quasem, founding president of the Islami Chhatra Shibir, is a member of the Jamaat's Central Executive Council and the organisation’s fifth most important leader.

The ICT in the verdict had described Dalim Hotel in Chittagong, where pro-liberation people were tortured and killed under his leadership, as the 'death factory'.

It had observed that Al-Badr members and Pakistani troops would take freedom fighters to Dalim Hotel to torture them until they were dead.

Apart from Dalim Hotel, the Al-Badr, under Mir Quasem’s leadership, had set up camps for torture and killings at Dowsta Mohammad Panjabee Building - a leather depot at Asadganj, Dewan Hotel in Dewanhat area and Salma Manzil at Panchlaish.

The death sentence charge

Charge No. 11

Mir Quasem had ordered the killing of freedom fighter Jashim Uddin Ahmed on Nov 8, 1971, after abducting and torturing him at Chittagong's Dalim Hotel. The young fighter’s body, along with those of five other unknown people, was thrown into the Karnaphuli River.

Mir Quasem is the sixth war criminal to see the verdict at its execution level. He is the fifth top Jamaat leader whose death sentence for war crimes has been upheld in the final verdict.

Jamaat’s assistant secretary general Abdul Quader Molla was the first to be hanged for 1971 war crimes on Dec 12, 2013.

Another assistant secretary general of the party, Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, was executed on Apr 11, 2015.

The jail authorities executed the death sentences of Jamaat secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and BNP Standing Committee member Salauddin Quader Chowdhury on Nov 21 last year.

Jamaat chief Motiur Rahman Nizami was the last to hang on May 11 this year.​