Bangladeshi Election Commission scraps Islamist party’s registration

DHAKA, Oct. 30 (NsNewsWire) — Bangladeshi Election Commission (EC) scrapped the registration of the largest Islamist party in the country, reports Xinhua.
The commission on Monday published a gazette notification in this regard saying that Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party, a key ally of ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), will be ineligible for the general election slated for December.
The EC move reportedly came five years after the country’s High Court Division declared illegal the Islamist party, many top leaders of which still face charges of committing war crimes during the country’s Liberation War in 1971.
After returning to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Bangladesh’s independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, established the first tribunal in March 2010, almost 40 years after the 1971 war.
Five opposition Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party leaders have already been executed for the 1971 war crimes.
Apart from them, Salaudin Quader Chowdhury, leader of ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was also executed for war crimes.
Muslim-majority Bangladesh was called East Pakistan until 1971. The Hasina government claimed that about 3 million people were killed in the liberation war of 1971.  Enditem