About Ghulam Azam
Ghulam Azam (7 November 1922 – 23 October 2014) was a Bangladeshi politician and Islamic scholar who served as the first emir of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI) from 1992 to 2002. Azam was accused of being involved in forming paramilitary groups, including Razakar Bahini and Al-Badr, to support the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War by the then government of Sheikh Hasina. These militias were involved in war crimes, including murder, rape, and torture during the Bangladesh genocide and opposed the Mukti Bahini, who fought for the independence of Bangladesh. Azam was arrested on 11 January 2012 by the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh (ICT), a domestic tribunal. He was charged and found guilty of war crimes such as conspiring, planning, incitement to and complicity in committing the genocide and was sentenced to 90 years in prison on 15 July 2013. The tribunal stated that Azam deserved capital punishment for his activity during the war but was given a lenient punishment of imprisonment because of his old age and poor health. The trial was criticized by international observers such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for being politically motivated. The deficiencies highlighted in the trial included judges improperly conducting "investigation on behalf of the prosecution", "collusion and bias among prosecutors and judges", failure "to protect defence witnesses" and "lack of evidence to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt". During Azam's leadership of Jamaat-e-Islami, Ashraf Hossain, a leader of Jamaat's student wing, Islami Chhatra Sangha, created Al-Badr in Jamalpur on 22 April 1971. In the 1991 Bangladeshi general election, Jamaat-e-Islami won 18 seats, and its support allowed the BNP to form a government. In the 1996 election, Jamaat won only three seats and most of their candidates lost their deposits.
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