Bangladesh commutes Islamist death sentence

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said Delwar Hossain Sayedee should spend "the rest of his natural life" in jail for crimes he committed during Bangladesh's war for liberation in 1971.

Sayedee, a leader in Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, was given the death penalty in February 2013, after a war crimes tribunal found him guilty of eight charges including mass killings, arson, rape, persecution of Hindus and other atrocities.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told reporters Wednesday that the ruling had come as a surprise.

"We had expected that the court would uphold his death sentence," he told the AFP news agency, adding that Sayedee was a notorious war criminal and it was a sad day for Bangladesh.

Sayedee's lawyer, however, said the decision would be appealed, and that his client should have been acquitted on all charges.

"The evidence against him does not warrant conviction or sentencing even for a day," lawyer Tajul Islam told AFP.

Security was tight around the court building ahead of Wednesday's decision, with thousands of police deployed in the capital Dhaka and paramilitary troops sent to Sayedee's home town. Shortly after the ruling was handed down, police clashed with hundreds of protesters calling the reduced sentence too lenient. Officers used batons, and fired tear gas and water cannon to break up the crowd, according to news agency AFP.

Deadly protests in 2013

Violent protests erupted last year following the initial death sentence verdict against Sayedee. At least 60 people were killed in those clashes, in which tens of thousands of hard-line Islamists confronted police with crude bombs, sticks and swords.

Sayedee is one of several Islamic leaders who have been convicted by the South Asian nation's war crimes tribunal, which is tasked with investigating atrocities committed during the nine-month conflict between India-backed Bangladeshi nationalists and Pakistani forces in 1971. At the time, Jamaat-e-Islami campaigned against independence, but the party denies involvement in any war crimes.

Bangladesh's government says an estimated 3 million people died in the conflict, and millions more were forced to flee their homes.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has called the war crimes tribunal a long-overdue effort to bring about justice to the people affected, but critics accuse her of using the body to persecute the Islamist opposition.

nm/dr (Reuters, AP, AFP)