Blow to Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami,court bans it from contesting polls

The verdict comes at a time when the demand for outlawing the party was mounting.

Bangladesh’s biggest right-wing party Jamaat-e-Islami was today banned from contesting future polls by a court here which cancelled its registration in a landmark ruling,leaving the once-most powerful fundamentalist party with an uncertain future.

The bench of justices M Moazzam Husain,M Enayetur Rahim,and Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque passed the judgement accepting a writ petition that challenged the legality of Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration as a political party.

Bangladesh Tariqat Federation’s Secretary General Rezaul Haque Chandpuri and 24 others had filed the writ petition on January 25,2009.

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In the petition,they said Jamaat-e-Islami was a religion-based political party and it did not believe in independence and sovereignty of Bangladesh.

Today’s verdict comes at a time when the demand for outlawing the party,blamed for war crimes during the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan,was mounting.

Several top Jamaat leaders,including its 91-year-old supremo Ghulam Azam,were recently sentenced either to death or to long jail terms for masterminding atrocities during the war.

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