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Published : 06 May 2016, 01:57 PM
They arrived around 11:15am on Friday and were allowed to enter Central Jail-2 at Kashimpur about 15 minutes later, Superintendent Prashanta Kumar Banik.
The six members included the Jamaat-e-Islami chief’s wife Shamsunnahar Nizami, daughter Khadiza Mohsina, sons Nojib Momen and Naimur Rahman and their wives.
Jailor Md Nasir Ahmed said their meeting with Nizami in a room inside the prison lasted for about 40 minutes.
On Thursday, a four-member Appellate Division bench, headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, removed the last legal hurdle before the government to hang Nizami by rejecting his petition for a review of his death sentence.
The International Crimes Tribunal had sentenced the former Al-Badr militia chief to death on Oct 29, 2014, for mass murders and rapes in Pabna and massacre of intellectuals during the 1971 Liberation War.
Nizami, who had also served as a minister in the BNP-led Four-Party alliance government, is currently in the Kashimpur prison’s condemned cell.
Jail officials said he heard the news about the Supreme Court rejecting his appeal on radio in his cell on Thursday afternoon.
According to the rules, Nizami now will be able to seek presidential clemency, the last option open to him to save his neck.
If he decides against seeking mercy, or if the president turns down his clemency petition, the government will be free to execute the death sentence.
His family will have another chance to meet him for the last time in jail before that happens.
After the verdict was delivered on Thursday, one of Nizami’s counsels, SM Shahjahan, said that the war criminal and his family will now decide whether to seek presidential mercy.
Jailor Ahmed said Nizami will be officially informed and his decision sought regarding the mercy plea after receiving the final copy of the apex court’s verdict.
After he was given the death penalty by the war crimes tribunal, Nizami had challenged it in the appeals court. He filed the review petition after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal on Jan 6 this year.
In its verdict on Nizami’s appeal, the apex court had said nothing short of a death sentence could be an apt punishment, given the nature of the horrific crimes he had committed during 1971.
The 72-year old man from Pabna was the chief of Islami Chhatra Sangha, then the student wing of Jamaat. He commanded the Al-Badr militia created by the Pakistan Army that was notorious for its ruthlessness.
