Bangladesh Court Sentences Islamist Leader to Death

Updated Jan. 30, 2014 12:47 p.m. ET

Matiur Rahman Nizami, leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, arrives at a Chittagong court before his sentencing Thursday. Reuters

A Bangladesh court sentenced an opposition Islamist leader and 13 others to death on Thursday in connection with an arms-smuggling case a decade ago.
A special tribunal in the port city of Chittagong imposed the death penalty on Matiur Rahman Nizami, the head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. The court also convicted Lutfozzaman Babar, a leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is allied with Jamaat.
The charges against them stem from a case dating back to April 2004 in which a shipment of arms was discovered after being unloaded from a ship at a jetty belonging to a state-owned fertilizer company.
Prosecutors said Mr. Babar, who was home minister at the time, and Mr. Nizami, who was industries minister, conspired to bring in a shipment of small arms, rocket launchers and grenades intended for the Indian separatist group United Liberation Front of Assam.
Kamal Uddin Ahmed, a prosecutor, said the state was satisfied with the verdict. “We have got justice,” he said.
Mr. Nizami and Mr. Babar, who have been in custody since 2010, pleaded not guilty to the charge of arms smuggling. Sanaullah Mia, a defense lawyer, said the two were innocent and had been instrumental in detecting and seizing the arms shipment. He said they plan to appeal.
In addition to the two opposition figures, the tribunal convicted and sentenced to death former officials of the National Security Intelligence service, the former chief executive of the fertilizer factory and three businessmen. Paresh Barua, an Indian national and a leader of the insurgent group ULFA, was also sentenced to death in absentia.
Their lawyers say they plan to appeal the decision.
Thirty-eight people were acquitted.
Police filed charges against Mr. Nizami and Mr. Babar in 2011 during the tenure of the Awami League government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. An earlier investigation, carried out in 2004, hadn’t named the two men.
India, Bangladesh’s neighbor and regional power, has accused Dhaka of allowing the insurgents of the United Liberation Front of Assam to set up camps along the border between the countries.
ULFA is a separatist group operating in the restive northeast Indian state of Assam bordering Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi government has in turn accused India of helping insurgents in its Chittagong Hill Tracts district. Both countries deny allowing the use of their territory for militancy.
Security cooperation between the two countries increased after Ms. Hasina’s Awami League came to power in 2009, officials of both countries say. Ms. Hasina’s critics accuse her of being too close to New Delhi, something she rejects.
Mr. Nizami is also on trial accused of war crimes committed during the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. The war crimes tribunal, set up in 2010 by Ms. Hasina to investigate atrocities committed during the war, has handed down a number of death sentences against leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
On Dec 12, Abdul Quader Molla, a senior Jamaat leader, was executed after being found guilty of war crimes.
Mr. Nizami’s war-crimes trial will continue.
Bangladesh has been gripped by political turmoil since last year when the opposition began a series of strikes aimed at forcing Ms. Hasina’s administration to carry out electoral reforms. Parliamentary elections held on Jan. 5 were boycotted by the opposition and marred by violence and a low turnout.
Since the elections, the government has intensified a crackdown on the opposition, arresting several senior opposition leaders.
The government says it is acting to maintain security. Ms. Hasina’s opponents say the premier is using the special tribunals to target her political enemies, an accusation she denies.
Earlier this month, police shut down an opposition-leaning newspaper after it published a report saying Indian troops had helped Bangladeshi police suppress protesters in the southwest Satkhira district, bordering India. The paper later apologized, but was not allowed to resume publication.
Write to Syed Zain Al-Mahmood at zain.al-mahmood@wsj.com

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