Politician sentenced to death over war crimes

A BANGLADESHI Islamist party leader has been sentenced to death over abuses carried out during the country’s independence war, triggering riots that killed at least 30 people.

Delwar Hossain Sayedee, 73, vice-president of the Jamaat-
e-Islami party, was found guilty yesterday by Bangladesh’s war crimes tribunal of mass killing, rape, arson, looting and forcing minority Hindus to convert to Islam during the 1971 war of separation from Pakistan, lawyers and tribunal officials said.

After he was convicted and sentenced, police clashed with activists from Sayedee’s party and violence raged in more than a dozen areas around the country, police and witnesses said. 
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina set up the tribunal in 2010 to ­investigate abuses during the war that claimed about three million lives.

Jamaat-e-Islami sided with ­Pakistan during the conflict.