Bangladesh delays execution of leader convicted of war crimes

Bangladesh's highest court halted the execution of a top opposition leader Tuesday, just an hour and a half before he was set to become the first person executed for war crimes committed during the country's 1971 war of independence.

Abdul Quader Mollah, a leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami political party, was due to be hanged early Wednesday morning — just one minute after midnight at Dhaka Central Jail, his lawyer said.

But Mollah's lawyers rushed to petition a judge, who agreed to delay the execution pending a hearing at 10:30 a.m. local time, ending widespread confusion and conflicting reports.

"The chamber judge of the Supreme Court has stayed the hanging until 10:30 a.m.," Mollah's defence lawyer Shishir Munir told the AFP news agency.

Mollah's original life sentence had been overturned by the Supreme Court in September, after mass protests called for him to be hanged.

Earlier, Quamrul Islam, the country's deputy law minister, confirmed that authorities intended to hang Mollah on Tuesday night and that he had refused the option of seeking a presidential pardon.

Prisons chief Main Uddin Khandaker said all preparations had been made to carry out the execution, and Mollah's family had been asked to meet the 65-year-old for the last time.

On Sunday, an execution order for Mollah was signed and sent to the main jail in the capital Dhaka, raising speculation that the former journalist could be hanged any moment.

The execution would be the first in special trials begun by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2010 of suspects accused of crimes during the nation's war of independence against Pakistan in 1971. The government says Pakistani soldiers, aided by local collaborators, killed 3 million people and raped 200,000 women during the nine-month war.

Mollah was convicted of rape and mass murder including the killing of over 350 unarmed Bengali civilians. Prosecutors described him as the "Butcher of Mirpur," a Dhaka suburb where he committed most of the atrocities.

Critics, however, said Hasina, whose bitter rivalry with Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Begum Khaleda Zia has dominated politics for more than two decades, has used the tribunal to target Jamaat and weaken the opposition.

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 alongside the BNP.

The U.S.-based activist group Human Rights Watch and U.N. Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Gabriela Knaul have warned that by executing Mollah without giving him the opportunity to appeal for a review, the country could be breaking international law.

There are also worries the execution could trigger more violence, with the country already reeling from its worst political unrest since independence ahead of a national election on Jan. 5.

At least 224 people have died in battles between opposition protesters, police and government supporters since January this year.

"What logic do they have to stop the execution?" Islam told AFP when asked about the criticism from rights experts.

"Did they stop the execution of Saddam Hussein?" he said referring to the former Iraqi dictator who was hanged in December 2006.

A domestic war crime court had originally sentenced Mollah to life imprisonment in February, but the sentence prompted protests by tens of thousands of secular demonstrators who viewed it as too lenient.

Under pressure, the government amended the war crime law retroactively to allow it to appeal the sentence and seek the death penalty, which the Supreme Court then handed down in September.

Al Jazeera and wire services