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Bangladesh commutes sentence of popular Islamic preacher convicted of murder, rape and persecution of Hindus

Sep 17, 2014 10:41 am By Robert Spencer

DelwarHossainSayedee“Bangladesh’s highest court on Wednesday commuted the death sentence on a top Islamic preacher, triggering angry protests by both his Islamist supporters and secular opponents and clashes with police.” Why are his “Islamist supporters” rioting when his death sentence was just commuted? Because they don’t think he should have been convicted of anything at all. After all, what’s murder, rape, and persecution of Hindus to an Islamic supremacist?

“Bangladesh commutes top Islamist’s death sentence, sparking clashes,” by Shafiqul Alam, AFP, September 17, 2014 (thanks to Twostellas):

Bangladesh’s highest court on Wednesday commuted the death sentence on a top Islamic preacher, triggering angry protests by both his Islamist supporters and secular opponents and clashes with police.

In a surprise ruling, the Supreme Court said 74-year-old Delwar Hossain Sayedee should spend “the rest of his natural life” in jail for crimes during the 1971 liberation war with Pakistan.

Sayedee’s death penalty passed last year by a war-crimes tribunal triggered the deadliest political violence in the country’s history, and thousands of police were deployed before Wednesday’s ruling.

“We had expected that the court would uphold his death sentence,” Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told AFP, adding that he was unhappy with the verdict.

Alam said Sayedee was a war criminal and “torturer of women” who had forcibly converted minority Hindus to Islam during the nine-month conflict, which led to the creation of Bangladesh from former East Pakistan.

Violence erupted between police and hundreds of secular demonstrators who converged on Dhaka University after Wednesday’s verdict to protest at perceived leniency.

Armed with batons, police fired tear gas and a water cannon to try to disperse the demonstrators who shouted slogans and threw stones at officers.

“This is part of negotiations between the government and the Jamaat-e-Islami party,” said protest leader Imran Sarker, whom police said was among seven people injured.

Secular activists have long called for the banning of Jamaat, the country’s largest Islamist party of which Sayedee was the vice president, accusing its leaders of atrocities committed during the war.

Jamaat, blamed for last year’s violence, called a two-day nationwide strike starting from Thursday, saying Sayedee was prosecuted on “false and fabricated” charges.

Some 2,000 of its activists clashed with police in the northwestern city of Rajshahi, where officers fired rubber bullets and tear gas, deputy police commissioner Nahidul Islam said.

“They staged protests in a regimented way and threw several cocktail bombs, forcing police to retaliate. We also arrested about 20 Jamaat activists,” he told AFP.

Clashes also broke out between Jamaat protesters and police in several other towns, leaving more than 40 people injured, online news portal Banglanews24 said.

Sayedee shot to prominence in the 1980s after he started preaching in some of the Muslim-majority nation’s top mosques. In his heyday he would draw hundreds of thousands to his sessions and CDs of his speeches were top sellers.

– Popular preacher –

Many of his supporters even claimed to have seen his face on the moon in a mark of his “saintly” status.

His conviction in February 2013 on eight charges of murder, rape and persecution of Hindus sparked riots by thousands of supporters nationwide, leaving more than 100 people dead.

Sayedee’s lawyer said he was dissatisfied with the latest ruling, adding his client should have been acquitted on all charges.

“The evidence against him does not warrant conviction or sentencing even for a day,” lawyer Tajul Islam told AFP.

Sayedee is among about a dozen Islamic leaders to have been convicted by the much-criticised tribunal set up by the secular government to investigate crimes during the 1971 war.

Islamists say its trials are more about settling scores than delivering justice.

The Islamists convicted so far were all accused of being leaders of pro-Pakistani militias who were behind the murder of thousands of people including some of Bangladesh’s top professors, writers, journalists and doctors.

Last December one of Sayedee’s top colleagues was hanged after the tribunal found him guilty of war crimes.

Rights groups say legal procedures at the tribunal fall short of international standards.

The government rejects the accusations, saying the trials are needed to heal the wounds of the war that it claims killed three million people.

Independent estimates put the number of deaths between 300,000 and 500,000.

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Comments

  1. zulu says

    Sep 17, 2014 at 10:49 am

    note the bright red henna beard!

    Sunnat of Henna Dye
    http://www.zikr.co.uk/content/view/71/112/

  2. Salah says

    Sep 17, 2014 at 11:06 am

    “Rights groups say legal procedures at the tribunal fall short of international standards.”

    That’s what they always say whenever Islamic terrorists face justice.
    That’s what they never say when non-Muslims face violence at the hands of Islamic terrorists.

    BTW, who is funding these groups?

    Ezra Levant on Ashu Solo and his “Christian hunt”!!!
    http://www.ezralevant.com/human_rights_farce/

  3. ralph says

    Sep 17, 2014 at 11:21 am

    Genesis 16: 7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

    “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

    9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

    11 The angel of the Lord also said to her:

    “You are now pregnant
    and you will give birth to a son.
    You shall name him Ishmael,[a]
    for the Lord has heard of your misery.
    12 He will be a wild donkey of a man;
    his hand will be against everyone
    and everyone’s hand against him,
    and he will live in hostility
    toward[b] all his brothers.”

  4. Angemon says

    Sep 17, 2014 at 11:26 am

    Bangladesh’s highest court on Wednesday commuted the death sentence on a top Islamic preacher, triggering angry protests by both his Islamist supporters and secular opponents and clashes with police.

    But muslims and islamic organizations in the West tell us that there’s no incompatibility between sharia and Western systems of law…

  5. Rob says

    Sep 17, 2014 at 3:56 pm

    I say again: Bangladesh was formed out of the genocide of Bengali Muslims by Pak Muslims.
    In the 70s Bengalis pleaded with the West to intervene. 000s of them fled across the border into India for safety. Eventually India intervened and Bangladesh was formed.
    The moral lesson is the more you do to protect Muslims from their folly, the more folly they commit.

  6. Ayatrollah says

    Sep 17, 2014 at 4:35 pm

    I’m tired of the press saying Muslims rape women. Clearly this pious brother was “enjoying” what Allah made lawful. No religious leader would rape. This is common sense.

  7. Western Canadian says

    Sep 18, 2014 at 2:28 am

    I long ago (after seeing a woman who was a victim of severe and disfiguring burns…. who had previously been one of the most beautiful women who ever lived, and I am not exaggerating) concluded that ugly is NOT a display of physical form, even though there are those who are not well favoured, for physical features….. It is instead an external display of the sick and twisted mind/spirit/soul, whatever you want to call the inner being… And that picture at the top of this article, proves it. islam (RTC): it brings out your inner self…. and boy, it is UGLY!!!!

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