Ghulam Azam\\\'s janaza after Zohr prayers: Azmi

The Namaj-e-janaza of former Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Prof Ghulam Azam will be held today (Saturday). Ghulam Azam’s son Abdullahil Aman Azmi, a former military officer, says his father’s funeral prayers will take place at Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in the city after the Zohr prayers on Oct 25. Later he will be buried at his family graveyard at Dhaka’s Moghbazar. Ghulam Azam died on Thursday at the age of 92. He was serving a 90 year prison sentence awarded to him by the ICT-1 for his wartime offences during Bangladesh’s independence struggles in 1971. The body of Azam, who breathed his last at the BSMMU Hospital at Shahbagh at 10:15pm on Thursday, was handed over to the family on Friday morning after autopsy. It was then taken to the family home at Moghbazar and kept in an air conditioned room for visitors. Ghulam Azam’s lawyer Tajul Islam on Friday said the family has been informed of Azam’s last wish to be buried at the family graveyard and to get Jamaat leaders Delwar Hossain Sayedee or Motiur Rahman Nizami to conduct the funeral prayers. ‘If the family wants that, we can move the court for parole for Sayedee or Nizami to conduct the janaza,’ Tajul said. Earlier, Azam's family members had indicated that a final decision on the janaza was to be taken after the return of his five sons who stay abroad. But on Friday evening, his second son Azmi announced that the janaza would take place on Saturday and that he would conduct the funeral prayers. The former brigadier general said: ‘This is essentially a family decision. The family wants me to conduct the last rites,’ according to a news agency.