The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

A faction of Islamic Oikya Jote (IOJ) yesterday claimed that there were minimum 50 war criminals associated with Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh.

Addressing a press conference in the city yesterday, Mesbahur Rahman Chowdhury, Chairman of IOJ, said he would place evidence of the heinous activities of Al-Badr forces if the state started prosecution of war criminals of 1971.

The Al-Badr was the paramilitary wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh that earned infamy for its collaboration with the Pakistan army against the Bengali nationalist movement in the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971.

The group is blamed for organising the mass killings of Bengali civilians, religious and ethnic minorities. The group is identified as one of the leading perpetrators of the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities.

The present chief of the Jamaat, Maulana Motiur Rahman Nizami has headed the Al-Badr organisation as the all-Pakistan Commander in Chief during the war. The group was banned by the independent government of Bangladesh, but most of its members had fled the country during and after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which led to Bangladesh's independence.

Demanding the trial of war criminals, Chowdhury called upon the caretaker government to ban the politics of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh.

Opposing the demand of banning religion-based politics, the IOJ leader said it would be a mistake to consider Jamaat-e-Islami as a democratic political party.

Meanwhile, Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president Barrister Amir-Ul-Islam yesterday called upon the government to form a commission to investigate the crimes of war criminals.

"We propose to try the war criminals on the basis of the findings of the commission," he said while speaking at a discussion on "Jail Killing Day" organised jointly by Jatiya Ganatantrik League and Muktijoddha Palli Society at the office of National Front in the city yesterday.

With Muktijoddha Ainjibi Parishad president Advocate Khondaker Shamsul Alam Dudu in the chair, the discussion was also addressed by historian Sirajuddin Ahmed, National Front chairman Comrade Nurul Huq Mehedi, Muktijoddha Palli Society president AH Alamgir, secretary general Alamgir Sheikh, Jatiya Ganatantrik League president MA Jalil, Mokhlesur Rahman, ASM Mostofa Kamal, Mokhlesur Rahman, Paritosh Talukder, Sardar Ruhul Amin, Arun Sarkar Rana.