As soon as slapped with the fees of crimes towards humanity dedicated throughout Bangladesh’s Liberation Struggle in 1971, Jamaat-e-Islami chief ATM Azharul Islam walked free out of jail on Wednesday following the Supreme Court docket’s acquittal of his dying sentence.
The apex courtroom made this resolution on Tuesday, overturning the dying sentence given by the Worldwide Crimes Tribunal (ICT) of Bangladesh to Azharul Islam, resulting in fury amongst a number of within the violence-hit South Asian nation, in response to native media stories.
Jailed for almost 13 years for warfare crimes, Azharul was obtained by get together leaders and activists on the jail gate by his radical supporters. Following this, he went straight to a rally on the Shahbagh intersection.
That is the primary occasion when a warfare crime convict has been acquitted by way of a evaluate petition because the fall of the previous Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League authorities on August 5 final 12 months in a violent mass rebellion, Bangladeshi media outlet UNB reported.
Outraged by Azharul’s acquittal, clashes broke out between left-leaning scholar activists and Jamaat’s scholar wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir members at Rajshahi College (RU) on Tuesday night time, leaving at the least 10 injured, native media reported.
Studies counsel that violence erupted when the leftist scholar teams holding a torch procession protesting the acquittal of Azharul had been confronted by violent Chhatra Shibir members. This led to stone-pelting between the 2 teams.
RU Chhatra Union President Rakib Hasan alleged that the supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami, beneath the banner of Anti-Shahbagh Alliance, attacked the procession organised by the Democratic Pupil Alliance.
“The Democratic Pupil Alliance known as for the torch procession to protest the acquittal of Jamaat chief Azharul, which they consider undermines the 2024 mass rebellion. In the course of the march, round 200 Shibir activists launched a sudden assault on our group of 12 to 13 individuals. We had been attacked thrice, leading to accidents to nearly all of us, with 4 struggling severe accidents,” the main Bangladeshi newspaper, The Enterprise Commonplace, quoted him as saying.
“Virtually everybody in our torch procession was injured. 4 of our leaders bear seen harm marks. We strongly condemn and protest this assault following the decision,” mentioned Fuad Ratul, convener of the Socialist Pupil Entrance.
In August 2012, he was arrested at his residence in Dhaka’s Moghbazar on expenses of crimes towards humanity and remained in custody. In December 2014, the ICT sentenced him to dying on 5 out of the 9 expenses.
Azharul was discovered responsible of orchestrating mass killings, abduction, and torture within the better Rangpur space, the place over a thousand individuals had been massacred in 1971.
Studies counsel that the chief of the Islamist get together tortured individuals, set ablaze a whole lot of homes, and dedicated different atrocities through the Bangladesh liberation warfare.
Difficult the decision, Azharul filed an enchantment in January 2015. Nevertheless, the Appellate Division, beneath a bench led by then-Chief Justice Syed Mahmud, upheld the dying sentence in October 2019.
After the complete verdict was printed on March 15, 2020, he submitted a evaluate petition, which the Supreme Court docket accepted.
The Appellate Division, after listening to the evaluate petition, granted go away to enchantment on February 26, 2025 and directed the submission of the case abstract which was subsequently submitted.
After listening to the enchantment, the courtroom delivered its closing judgment on Tuesday, acquitting Azharul of all warfare crime expenses.