Bangladesh Islamist politician executed

According to media reports, an Islamist politician convicted of war crimes during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan was hanged at a prison in Dhaka.
Mohammad Kamaruzzaman was convicted of crimes including the killing of at least 120 unarmed farmers by a domestic war crimes tribunal in May 2013.

The 62 year-old had refused to seek clemency from Bangladesh's president. Kamaruzzaman was the third most senior figure in Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist opposition party, and he is the second war crimes suspect in Bangladesh to be executed.

The AFP has reported that the country has tightened security around the country as the execution has caused anger among Kamaruzzaman's opposition supporters. According to the news agency, local police have said that extra officers were deployed in the capital and in other major cities .

"We're alert against any bid to create anarchy or violence," a police spokeswoman told the AFP.

In December 2013 Abdul Kader Mullah, assistant secretary general of Jamaat-e-Islami since 2010 and a former editor of an Islamist newspaper, was hanged after being found guilty on five of six counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The BBC reports that former Jamaat-e-Islami leader Ghulam Azam died in custody in 2014 and former Bangladesh Nationalist Party MP and Jamaat-e-Islami leader Motiur Rahman Nizami is awaiting the death sentence after being convicted in October 2014, among others.

Twenty-one members of Kamaruzzaman’s family, including his wife and son, visited him in prison on Saturday afternoon. There was reportedly tight security outside the jail ahead of the condemned man's execution, with large demonstrations and counter-demonstrations expected in support of and against the hanging.