DHAKA, Bangladesh — A senior Islamist party politician was hanged Saturday for crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence against Pakistan, an official said.
The execution of Mir Quasem Ali, 64, a leader of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party, was carried out three days after the Supreme Court dismissed his plea for a review of his death sentence.
Jail officer Prashanta Kumar Bhoumik said Ali was hanged at Kashimpur jail in central Bangladesh.
Ali, also a business tycoon and financier of the party, was sentenced to death in November 2014 by a tribunal set up to prosecute people who worked with the Pakistani military during the war.
Both the Pakistan army and its local agents were responsible for atrocities on unarmed civilians during the nine-month conflict in what was then the eastern wing of Pakistan.
The defendant received the death sentence for crimes including abduction, killing and dumping bodies of several people in a river in the southeast of the country.
He was also convicted of several other crimes against humanity during the 1971 conflict.
The government increased security across Bangladesh on Saturday, apparently to prevent violence by activists from the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which went on rampages when verdicts in war crimes cases were handed down.
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