Dhaka (AsiaNews) - Four dead, including a 9 year old girl and dozens of wounded, buses, shops and private cars vandalized and set on fire. This is the provisional toll from the National hartal (strike) called in Bangladesh, after the verdict issued yesterday by the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka. The court sentenced 91 year old Islamist leader and former president of Jamaat-e-Islami (Islamic Party), Ghulam Azam to 90 years in jail, for his role in the crimes committed during the Independence War (1971). A ruling that left everyone unhappy: the supporters of the Jamaat, are demanding their leaders absolution, Gonojagoron Mancha civil rights activists instead say the sentence is too light and call for the death penalty.
The courts have recognized Azam
guilty of all the charges: murder, torture of unarmed people, conspiracy,
incitement and complicity in genocide. Being
91, by law the judges spared Ghulam the death penalty.
Yesterday,
there were demonstrations inside and outside the courtroom. Gonojagoron
Mancha activists gathered in Shahbagh, district of Dhaka considered the
"Tahrir Square" of Bangladesh, calling for the death penalty. Today
both the Islamic party that secular movement have called for a hartal, which
as expected has turned into urban warfare.
Activists
of Jamaat and Islami Chhatra Shibir (student wing of the party), detonated 11
homemade bombs in Chittagong, nine in Comilla and one in Narayanganj. Of
the four deaths, two are students of the Islami Chhatra Shibir, killed in clashes
with the police. The
others are a 60 year old man, who was killed in Dinajpur by bricks thrown by
some picketers, and a 9 year old girl, knocked down in Gazipur by a bus trying to
flee the violence.