Defence lawyers have condemned as ‘political’ a death sentence passed by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh on an islamist leader convicted of crimes against humanity in the country’s 1971 war of independence. 

Abdul Kader Mullah was convicted by a special war crimes tribunal in February and sentenced to life imprisonment. Rejecting his appeal today, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh sentenced him to death, with no possibility of further appeal. The country’s attorney general stated that the constitutional right to review did not apply as the war crimes trial fell outside the constitution. 

Prosecutor Ziad Al Malum told journalists that the decision to increase the sentence was approved by four to one at the court.

British barrister Toby Cadman, foreign legal counsel, condemned the process as ‘nothing short of a political show trial’ aimed at ‘demonising a political opponent’. He said the decision over which the accused now has no further right of appeal ‘is in clear breach of international law’. He called for Bangladesh’s war crimes trials to be replaced by ‘a credible, international criminal tribunal under the auspices of the United Nations’.

Some 3 million people are believed to have died during Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan, with many atrocities blamed on Islamist allies of the Pakistani forces.