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LequteMan
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According to Fox News, a special war crimes tribunal set up by Prime minister Sheikh Hasina in 2010 has on Tuesday in Bangladesh convicted Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, a senior member of the main opposition party of war crimes during the country’s independence fight against Pakistan in 1971 and ruled that he should be put to death.
Pakistani soldiers, aided by local collaborators, had killed 3 million people and raped 200,000 women during the nine-month war that ended in December 1971.
The tribunal convicted Chowdhury on nine of 23 charges, including four counts of genocide. Chowdhury was found guilty of aiding and ordering the killing of at least 200 people, mostly minority Hindus, during the war in Chittagong.
The Attorney General Mahbubey Alam and the ruling Awami League party welcomed the verdict.
The opposition, led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, has criticized the trials as an attempt to weaken the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies.
Chowdhury's wife, Farhat Quader Chowdhury, said her husband would appeal.
Hours after the verdict, Chowdhury's supporters attacked ruling party activists and smashed and burned vehicles in Chittagong, leaving one man injured, Channel 24 TV reported. It added that more than 2 vehicles were burned in Dhaka.
Chowdhury's party called a daylong general strike in Chittagong on Wednesday.
Six people have already been convicted of war crimes by the tribunal. Four of them are currently top officials of the country's main Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, while one is a former party chief and another is an expelled member of the party. Those verdicts led to widespread violence.
The New York-based group Human Rights Watch criticized the conduct of the tribunals, saying they are not of international standards.
Hasina's government denies that the tribunals are biased, saying it had pledged before the 2008 elections to prosecute those responsible for war crimes.
Pakistani soldiers, aided by local collaborators, had killed 3 million people and raped 200,000 women during the nine-month war that ended in December 1971.
The tribunal convicted Chowdhury on nine of 23 charges, including four counts of genocide. Chowdhury was found guilty of aiding and ordering the killing of at least 200 people, mostly minority Hindus, during the war in Chittagong.
The Attorney General Mahbubey Alam and the ruling Awami League party welcomed the verdict.
The opposition, led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, has criticized the trials as an attempt to weaken the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies.
Chowdhury's wife, Farhat Quader Chowdhury, said her husband would appeal.
Hours after the verdict, Chowdhury's supporters attacked ruling party activists and smashed and burned vehicles in Chittagong, leaving one man injured, Channel 24 TV reported. It added that more than 2 vehicles were burned in Dhaka.
Chowdhury's party called a daylong general strike in Chittagong on Wednesday.
Six people have already been convicted of war crimes by the tribunal. Four of them are currently top officials of the country's main Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, while one is a former party chief and another is an expelled member of the party. Those verdicts led to widespread violence.
The New York-based group Human Rights Watch criticized the conduct of the tribunals, saying they are not of international standards.
Hasina's government denies that the tribunals are biased, saying it had pledged before the 2008 elections to prosecute those responsible for war crimes.
