DHAKA:
Round 50,000 individuals attended Tuesday’s funeral Jamaat-e-Islami chief in Bangladesh, police mentioned, after information of his dying whereas he was in jail for conflict crimes prompted violent anti-government protests.
Delwar Hossain Sayedee, 83, was sentenced to dying in 2013 for rape, homicide and the persecution of Hindu Bangladeshis through the nation’s independence conflict many years earlier.
He died on Monday after struggling a coronary heart assault in a jail outdoors Dhaka, prompting protests within the capital that turned violent when police moved in to disperse them.
Heavy police safety guarded a funeral prayer at Sayedee’s hometown in coastal Pirojpur district the place an enormous crowd gathered to look at his physique be laid to relaxation.
“Some 50,000 individuals joined the funeral prayer,” deputy district police chief Sheikh Mustafizur Rahman informed AFP, including that the burial passed off with out incident.
However elsewhere within the nation, one particular person was killed throughout a confrontation between police and a bunch trying to carry a memorial ceremony for Sayedee.
“They gathered and needed to carry a funeral prayer, stoking a conflict between them and police,” Chakaria responsibility police officer Md. Selim Mia informed AFP.
“One particular person has died and a few extra have been injured together with our policemen.”
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Sayedee was vice chairman of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami social gathering, a political group with an enormous following regardless of being banned for a lot of its historical past.
The social gathering stays controversial for supporting Bangladesh’s continued union with Pakistan through the former nation’s brutal 1971 liberation conflict.
Sayedee shot to prominence within the 1980s after he began preaching in a few of the Muslim-majority nation’s prime mosques.
In his heyday, he would draw lots of of 1000’s to his speeches, recordings of which have been broadly distributed.
His conviction a decade in the past by a conflict crimes tribunal — criticised by rights teams for a number of procedural shortcomings — triggered the deadliest protests in Bangladesh’s historical past, with no less than 100 individuals killed within the clashes that adopted.
Jamaat mentioned tens of 1000’s of its supporters have been arrested in a subsequent crackdown, and the social gathering was solely this yr permitted to stage public demonstrations once more.
Information of Sayedee’s dying on Monday evening introduced 1000’s of Jamaat supporters to the streets chanting anti-government slogans.
Police dispersed protests with rubber bullets and tear fuel earlier than daybreak on Tuesday, Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) spokesman Faruk Hossain informed AFP.
The police power mentioned it had rejected an software by Jamaat to carry a post-funeral prayer within the capital.