BANGLADESH COMMUTES JAMAAT LEADER’S SENTENCE

Delwar Hossain Sayedee, vice-president of the Jamaat-e-Islami party (Photo: News Nextbd)

Dhaka, 22 Dzulqa’dah 1435/17 September 2014 (MINA) – Bangladesh’s Supreme Court has commuted the death sentence of Delwar Hossain Sayedee, an powerful Islamist leader whose sentencing last year touched off the deadliest political violence in the country’s history.

In a ruling on Wednesday, the court said Sayedee. 74,should spend “the rest of his natural life” in jail, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam said.

“We had expected that the court would uphold his death sentence,” Alam said, Al Jazeera quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

Sayedee, vice-president of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was one the country’s most popular Islamic preachers with millions of followers.

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Lawyers for Sayedee said they were not satisfied with the court’s ruling on Sayedee, who was convicted last year on eight counts including murder, rape and persecution of the country’s minority Hindu community.

“He should have been acquitted of all charges as the case was tainted by a number controversies,” Khandaker Mahbub Hossain, one of Alam’s lawyers, said.

Last February’s judgement by a war-crimes court led to weeks of deadly protests that left more than 100 people dead and plunged the impoverished nation into a major crisis.

In advance of Wednesday’s ruling, thousands of police, the elite security force, Rapid Action Battalion, and the paramilitary border guards tightened security in major cities and towns across the country. (T/P001/P3)

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Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)