Bangladesh ex-minister sentenced to hang for genocide

Bangladesh’s war crimes court today sentenced a former government minister to hang for rape and genocide during the 1971 independence struggle against Pakistan.

Syed Mohammad Kaiser became the 15th person to be convicted of atrocities by the International Crimes Tribunal, which found him guilty of heading a militia that rounded up and killed some 150 people in the nine-month conflict.

The 73-year-old, who uses a wheelchair, did not react as the judge read out the verdict and said he would be “hanged by the neck until his death”.

Lawyers for Kaiser, a former minister with the Jatiya Party which forms part of Bangladesh’s ruling coalition, have rejected the charges and say they will appeal.

The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina created the International Crimes Tribunal, a domestic court, in 2010. It has mostly focused on the trials of the leaders of the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, although a former minister of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party has also been sentenced to hang.

Prosecutors said Kaiser had raised a pro-Pakistani militia that carried out a series of murders, rapes and looting.

Judge Obaidul Hassan said the prosecution proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that Kaiser had established the militia, which created a “reign of terror”. agencies