Bangla SC puts execution of Mollah on hold

Later in the morning,lawyers met at the Supreme Court’s appeals division and will resume arguments on Thursday,a state prosecutor said. The stay of execution remains until the appeal against the death penalty is resolved,he added.

Mollah is assistant secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami party,which is barred from contesting elections but plays a key role in the opposition movement led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

He is one of five Islamist leaders condemned to death by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT),set up in 2010 to investigate atrocities perpetrated during the 1971 conflict,in which three million people died.

Critics of the ICT say it has been used as a political tool by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina,who is locked in a long and poisonous feud with BNP leader Begum Khaleda Zia,as a way of weakening the opposition as Jan. 5 elections approach.

But many Bangladeshis support the court,believing that those convicted of war crimes should be punished,underlining how the events of 42 years ago still resonate in an impoverished nation of 160 million deeply divided over the role for Islam.

In sporadic violence late on Tuesday,when Mollah’s fate was still uncertain,at least three people were killed,including a mother and her 7-year-old daughter who were burned to death when pro-Jamaat activists torched their truck north of Dhaka.

In the capital,hundreds of people angrily chanted for Mollah’s execution to be carried out. The drama around Mollah’s fate has worsened the rift between Hasina and Khaleda,whose enmity has overshadowed Bangladesh politics for more than 20 years.