Tribunal finds Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, secretary-general of Jamaat-e-Islam, guilty of war crimes.
A Bangladesh court has sentenced a senior leader of the country's largest Islamic party to death for war crimes committed during the 1971 independence war against Pakistan.
Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, 65, was found guilty by the International Crimes Tribunal of five charges, including abduction and murder, and was sentenced to death, MK Rahman, Bangladesh's junior attorney-general and prosecutor said on Wednesday.
"In three out of five charges he was given the death sentence," Rahman said after the verdict in the capital, Dhaka.
Mojaheed, the secretary-general of Jamaat-e-Islam, had faced seven charges of murder, mass killing, torture, arson and abduction during he war of liberation against Pakistan.
The tribunal found him guilty of kidnapping and killing a journalist, a music director and other people.
He had been accused of leading a notorious group that during the war kidnapped and killed many teachers, journalists and writers who supported the cause for independence.
Appeal
Al Jazeera's Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said that Mojaheed could appeal the sentence and general elections were due to be held in five months' time, which could prompt a retrial.
Source: Al Jazeera, July 17, 2013