Mir Quasem to be buried in Manikganj, official says after execution

Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mir Quasem Ali, hanged for war crimes, will be buried in his ancestral village in Manikganj, a prison official has said.

Abul Hossainbdnews24.com
Published : 3 Sept 2016, 07:06 PM
Updated : 3 Sept 2016, 08:02 PM

The wartime terror was executed at Kashimpur Central Jail at 10:30pm on Saturday for the atrocities he committed as the Al-Badr commander of Chittagong in 1971.

After the execution of the death sentence, Senior Superintendent of Jail Prashanta Kumar Banik told reporters that the body would be sent to Manikganj.

Born in Manikganj in 1952, Mir Quasem was raised in Chittagong.

He lost his ancestral house at Munshidangi village to river erosion and bought a piece of land in Chala village.

Son of a fourth-class railways employee, Mir Quasem had gradually left the mark of his shrewdness on both politics and finance as he turned the Jamaat’s financial backbone after becoming a key player in the party’s top brass. 

He became the founding president of the Islami Chhatra Shibir, a rechristened Islami Chhatra Sangha, on Feb 6, 1977, two years after Gen Ziaur Rahman allowed the Jamaat back into politics in Bangladesh, whose independence from Pakistan it had so violently opposed.

Mir Quasem was the convenor of NGO Rabita al-Alam al-Islami’s Bangladesh chapter when he started playing some role in Jamaat’s politics in 1980. He later went on to become the NGO’s director.

He was a former vice-chairman of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited and chairman of the now-closed Diganta Media Corporation, believed to be pro-Jamaat.

He is also the founder of Ibn Sina Trust and a founding member of Islami Bank Foundation.

He became a member of the Jamaat’s policymaking central executive council in 1985.

Mir Quasem built no house but a mosque on the land he bought in Chala. He wanted to fight in election from the constituency on BNP-Jamaat coalition's ticket.

Freedom fighters and Awami League supporters demonstrated in Manikganj after media reported, quoting Mir Quasem's wife, that he would be buried there.

They demanded the authorities do not allow the body into Manikganj.