3 die as Bangladesh war trial riots enter 5th day

Officers of the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh shot and killed two protesters when they were surrounded by several thousand demonstrators in Kolaroa, a subdistrict of Satkhira district, around 340 kilometers south-west of Dhaka, police officer Sikder Akkas Ali said.

A 15-year old boy was shot dead when police and protesters exchanged gunfire in Ullapara town, Sirajganj district, some 230 km northwest of the capital, he said.

The fatalities brought to at least 65 the official death toll since violence broke out Thursday when a tribunal sentenced to death the vice president of the Jamaat-e-Islami opposition party, Delwar Hossain Sayedee.

Sayedee, 73, was convicted of murder, looting, arson, rape and the forcible conversions of Hindus to Islam during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, which left an estimated 3 million people killed, 200,000 women raped and thousands of homes torched.

Jamaat-e-Islami, which opposed independence during the conflict, has rejected the trials of Sayedee and several other of its leaders as politically motivated.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed set up the tribunal in 2010, after a previous prosecution attempt was called off following the 1975 assassination of Sheikh Majibur Rahman, Bangladesh's founding president and Hasina's father.

The tribunal in February sentenced to life in prison Abdul Quader Mollah, Jamaat-e-Islami assistant secretary general, drawing large protests from Bangladeshis demanding he receive the death sentence.

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