Bangladesh declares Jamaat illegal

DHAKA: The High Court in Dhaka on Thursday declared the registration of the Jamaat-i-Islami, the country’s biggest Islamic party, as a political party with the Bangladeshi election commission as illegal. “It is hereby declared illegal,” said Moazzem Hossain, the chief judge hearing the case. Security was tight in the Bangladeshi capital for the occasion, with fears that the verdict could trigger fresh unrest. The high court announced its decision on the legality of Jamaat-i-Islami after a petition was lodged arguing the party's charter conflicted with the country’s secular constitution. The decision could trigger fresh protests by Jamaat supporters in the politically volatile country, already reeling from deadly violence over war crime verdicts passed on Jamaat's top leadership. Police officers and members of the elite Rapid Action Battalion had been deployed outside the court in central Dhaka ahead of the verdict in an attempt to prevent any violence. “We have taken adequate security measures in and around the court area,” deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Maruf Hossain Sarder told AFP. A leading Sufi group, which practices Islamic mysticism, and dozens of others filed the public interest litigation in January 2009 seeking to scrap Jamaat's registration just days after a secular government took power. A lawyer for the petitioner, Sheikh Rafiqul Islam, told AFP on Wednesday that Jamaat's charter violates the secular constitution as it calls for religion centric laws and discriminates against minorities and women. Defence lawyer Tazul Islam said no clause of the party charter was in conflict with the constitution. Secular protesters have long demanded that Jamaat be banned for its role in the 1971 war of independence, during which it opposed Bangladesh's break away from Pakistan. Top Jamaat leaders are being tried for crimes during the war and four of them have been sentenced to death for murder, mass murder, rape and religious persecution during the struggle. Protests over the verdicts have sparked violence that has left at least 150 people dead during street clashes with security forces, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday. Jamaat says the trials are a sham aimed at eliminating the party, which is a key opposition force. Abdullah Taher, a senior Jamaat official, accused the government of “persecuting” the party which has millions of loyal supporters. “About 50,000 of our leaders and activists have been arrested since the first war crime verdict against our leaders,” he told AFP, adding that police have also filed cases against some half a million of its supporters. About 90 per cent of Bangladesh's 153 million strong population are Muslim and the constitution was changed in 1988 making Islam the country’s state religion. But the original constitution, drafted by the main secular party after independence, bars the use of religion in politics.