Dhaka: Bangladesh's Sector Commanders Forum , a grouping of 1971 Liberation War veterans, has published a list of 50 war criminals that includes name of senior leaders of Islamic Jamaat-e-Islami.

"We are publishing the initial list of 50 war criminals and we will soon publish a complete list of these elements who were under trial before 1975 and were released by the subsequent government," a Forum leader said at a press conference yesterday. The Forum's move comes at a time when it was clear that Jamaat-e-Islami, a key ally of former premier Khaleda Zia a Bangladesh Nationalist party, would get the mandatory registration as a political party by the Election Commission.

Forum had earlier demanded the party be debarred from polls for siding with the Pakistani troops in 1971. Jamaat and several other religion-based parties opposed Bangladesh's 1971 independence backed by India while Al-Badr and Razakar militia forces, mostly manned by their men, acted as the auxiliary forces of the Pakistani army during the Liberation War.

The so-called elite Al-Badr forces, led by current Jamaat chief Motiur Rahman Nizami and secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, is widely believed to have killed frontline intellectuals, after brutal torture, abducting them from their homes visibly in an effort to cripple the emerging nation intellectually just two days ahead of their defeat on December 16 in 1971.

Source : PTI