Hasan Ali gets death for genocide in 1971

Kishoreganj’s absconding Razakar commander Syed Md Hasan Ali will have to die for massacring his own people to stop Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, a court says. The first war crimes tribunal delivered the verdict on Tuesday after five out of the six charges levelled against him have been proven beyond doubt. Ali, son of a local collaborator, is the fifth person to be convicted of war crimes in absentia since the trials started in 2010. His notoriety in Tarhail Thana during the war earned him nicknames like ‘Razakar Daroga’ and ‘Razakar OC’. An estimated three million people were killed and millions of others were displaced and forced to seek shelter in India during the nine-month war in 1971. Trying those who sided with Pakistan during the war remains an emotional issue in Bangladesh. Most of those convicted in the last 18 verdicts are from Jamaat-e-Islami, a party accused of committing war crimes. Ali can challenge the court’s verdict within a month but he will have to surrender before the court, which seems unlikely, according to a news agency.