Barely seven years ago, Mujaheed was Minister for Social Welfare, flying the national flag on his car bonnet and thus fuelling mass resentment.
The second war crimes tribunal in its judgment on Wednesday said the 66-year old will have to walk the gallows for mass murders that he had planned and executed during the 1971 Liberation War.
The judgment establishes that he had abducted, tortured and killed those who fought for the creation of the flag he later flaunted.
Mujaheed was found “guilty of extermination of intellectuals” and involvement in the murder and torture of Hindus, crimes that earned him the maximum penalty.
The people of the country had themselves been levelling the charges against him for a long time.
“As far as my knowledge goes, it is the first case in which a former minister has been given the death sentence,” Deputy Inspector General of Prisons Golam Haider told bdnews24.com.
None of the others ordered to be hanged by the war crimes tribunals were ever a minister. Three of the suspected war criminals – Abdul Alim, Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and Motiur Rahman Nizami - did, however, hold ministerial portfolios.
Alim was a minister in BNP founder Gen Ziaur Rahman's Cabinet, while Salauddin Quader Chowdhury was included in Gen HM Ershad’s.
Chowdhury, a lawmaker from Chittagong, was a former prime ministerial adviser on parliamentary affairs when BNP chief Khaleda Zia was in office.
Nizami served as both agriculture and industries minister in the 2001-6 BNP-led coalition government.
After the General Secretary of the Al-Badr, which sided with the Pakistan Army during the 1971 Liberation War, was given the death sentence, Additional Attorney General MK Rahman also said no minister before Mujaheed was given such punishment.
The court found Mujaheed, in his mid-20s in 1971, guilty of five charges that included murder of intellectuals, genocide, abduction, torture, and murder.
