Dhaka: Bangladesh's Supreme Court upheld the death penalty on Monday handed down for an Islamist leader for atrocities during the war of independence from Pakistan more than four decades ago.
Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, 62, assistant secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was found guilty of genocide and torture of unarmed civilians during the 1971 war to break away from Pakistan by a special war crimes tribunal in May last year.
The tribunals have delivered death sentences for two Jamaat leaders, including its party chief and former minister, Motiur Rahman Nizami, over the past week.
Violent protests over the trials are one of the main challenges facing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who opened an inquiry into war crimes in 2010.
Defence lawyers said it would file a petition for a review but state prosecutors said a review was not an option.
"His death penalty was upheld by a majority decision of the Supreme Court," chief prosecutor Golam Arif Tipu told reporters outside the packed court amid tight security.
Veterans of the war were among hundreds outside the court who cheered the verdict.
"We want the verdict be implemented soon," Nasiruddin Yusuf, a filmmaker and war veteran, told reporters.
In September, the Supreme Court commuted to life imprisonment a death sentence for another top Islamist leader, Delawar Hossain Sayedee, convicted for similar crimes.
An Islamist politician was hanged in December, the first war crimes execution in Bangladesh, after the Supreme Court overturned a life sentence imposed by the tribunals.
The tribunals have angered Islamists who call them a politically motivated bid to persecute the leadership of Jamaat and weaken the opposition.
More than 200 people were killed in clashes last year, most of them Islamist party activists and security force members.
International human rights groups say the tribunal's procedures fall short of international standards.
The government denies such charges.
What was East Pakistan at the end of British rule in 1947 broke away into independent Bangladesh in 1971 after a war between Bangladeshi nationalists, backed by India, and Pakistani forces. About three million people were killed in the war.
Some factions in Bangladesh, including the Jamaat, opposed the break with Pakistan, but the party denies accusations that its leaders committed murder, rape and torture.
