BANGLADESH POLICE FIRE ON PROTESTERS, KILLING TWO
Jamaat supporters set upon one officer as police tried to clear a road blocked by fallen trees in the town of Kaliganj
DHAKA, July 16, 2013 (AFP) - Police fired on Islamist demonstrators in southwestern Bangladesh on Tuesday, killing two as machete-wielding protesters went on the rampage over the conviction of a senior Islamist leader for war crimes.
Several thousand supporters of the country's largest Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami took to the streets in Satkhira district, attacking police with sticks and machetes and throwing homemade bombs, officers said.
Jamaat supporters set upon one officer as police tried to clear a road blocked by fallen trees in the town of Kaliganj.
“They hacked him (the officer) with a machete. We opened fire at them to rescue the officer. Two Jamaat activists were hit by bullets and they died,” district deputy police chief Tajul Islam said, adding that eight other police officers were injured.
Islamists and secular groups called rival strikes over the conviction and sentence of 90-year-old Ghulam Azam, the spiritual leader of Jamaat, for masterminding atrocities during the 1971 war of independence against Pakistan.
The war crimes tribunal sentenced Azam, whom prosecutors compared to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, to 90 years in pris- on on Monday on five charges of planning, conspiracy, incitement, complicity and murder during the war.
Jamaat, a key member of the opposition, says the trials are aimed at eliminating its leaders. But secular groups say Azam should have been hanged.
Azam was the fifth Islamist and the fourth Jamaat official convicted by the controversial court set up by the secular government. Azam, the war- time head of Jamaat, was spared the death penalty because of his age and health.
Prosecutors had sought execution, describing Azam as a “lighthouse” who guided all war criminals and the “architect” of the militias who committed most of the wartime atrocities.