Death sentence for former Bangladesh politician

A former local leader of Bangladesh's ruling Awami League party was on Monday sentenced to hang for his role in the death of dozens of people.

The war crimes court in the capital, Dhaka, found Mobarak Hossain, 64, guilty of heading a pro-Pakistani militia that was responsible for killing scores of people during Bangladesh's 1971 war to gain independence from Pakistan.

"He was sentenced to death for the murder of 33 people and given (a) life term for the abduction and murder of another person," prosecutor Shahidur Rahman said.

"Hossain and his associates abducted 132 people and then murdered 33 of them on the bank of a pond," he added.

Controversial tribunal

Hossain, who was a leader of the Awami League party in the eastern district of Brahmanbaria for 16 years, was expelled from the party after war crime charges were laid against him in 2012.

He is the first person connected with the party to be given the death penalty - the court has focused mostly on trying officials from the country's largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which opposed independence during the conflict. Hossain had previously been an official in the latter party, before it was banned for some years following independence.

The leader of Jamaat and its top lieutenants were sentenced to death last year on war crime charges, unleashing the country's worst-ever political violence, which left some 500 people dead.

An ex-minister of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has also been sentenced to death.

Both Jamaat and the BNP have said the trials at the war crimes court are politically motivated, while rights groups say they do not meet international standards.

The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has defended the hearings, saying they will promote reconciliation after the conflict. It says three million died in the war, a figure that is six times more than the highest estimate by independent researchers.

tj/se (AFP, dpa)