“The black will take no other hue.
The devils will not heed scripture.
Let justice not be a dream deferred.”
On 27 May 2025, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of the so-called Islamist leader and notorious war criminal ATM Azharul Islam, accused of mass murder during the 1971 Liberation War. The long and painful struggle to bring Azhar to justice has ended in a disgraceful acquittal — a dark day for the nation.
In a move that has shocked the country and outraged survivors of the 1971 genocide, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court overturned Azhar’s conviction for heinous war crimes. Once condemned to death, the Jamaat-e-Islami stalwart is now free, as the court ordered his immediate release in the absence of other pending charges. Years of judicial effort lie in ruins; the hopes of thousands of bereaved families turned to ash.
On 30 December 2014, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) sentenced Azhar to death for genocide, abduction, torture, rape, and arson in Rangpur during the war. He was found guilty on five of nine charges, including the slaughter of 1,256 unarmed civilians, the abduction of 17 others, and the rape of 13 women. He presided over the destruction of homes and the systematic torture of innocents.
Yet now, the final bastion of justice has collapsed. His acquittal is not just a legal failure — it is a moral catastrophe that wounds the very soul of our nation.
The war of liberation began on the night of 25 March 1971, when the West Pakistani military junta, under General Yahya Khan, launched Operation Searchlight — a genocidal assault on the people of East Pakistan. Aided by local collaborators including Jamaat-e-Islami, Al-Badr, Al-Shams, and the Razakars, the military waged a brutal campaign. Among the most infamous of these collaborators was ATM Azhar, then a zealous young Jamaat leader and commander of Al-Badr forces in Rangpur.
With Pakistani troops, Azhar led campaigns of murder, rape, and looting. Entire villages were erased. Women were violated. Children were not spared. The same man, now white-bearded and wrapped in religious garb, has been absolved by the system that once swore to bring him to account.
The ICT, formed in 2009, was a solemn promise to the victims of 1971. On 31 October 2019, the Supreme Court upheld Azhar’s death sentence after extensive hearings. That ruling has now been undone — justice reversed, memory dishonoured.
After Bangladesh’s hard-earned independence, Jamaat-e-Islami was banned. Many of its leaders fled. But the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975 and the rise of military dictator Ziaur Rahman brought them back. The ban was lifted. The criminals returned, regrouped, and rebranded.
Draped in religious symbols — long beards, prayer caps, flowing robes — they masqueraded as pious men. But there is no holiness in blood-soaked hands. No sanctity in a soul that sanctioned genocide. ATM Azhar, like his ideological kin, presents himself as a humble elder. Yet he is the Butcher of Rangpur. In 1971, he cried “Allahu Akbar” as people were shot dead. He praised Pakistan as Islam’s holy land while corpses rotted in the streets. He denied martyrs burial, letting dogs and vultures feast on them.
These men are architects of deception. They speak of faith while desecrating its essence. Science writer Robin Marantz Henig once noted that English has over a hundred words for deception — prevarication, collusion, fakery, delusion. Azhar and his ilk embody them all.
Their ideology — a fusion of fascism and distorted religiosity — has always been at odds with truth, justice, and humanity. Jamaat’s leaders speak in euphemisms. Their “Islamic state” is tyranny. Their “brotherhood” was extermination. Golam Azam, the movement’s chief, orchestrated mass killings with cold precision. ATM Azhar was one of his most loyal executioners.
They were all complicit — Azhar, Sayedee, Nizami, Mujahid. Each loaded the bullets, stoked the hatred, and glorified death.
The people of Bangladesh waited decades for justice. Many died without seeing it. With Azhar’s release, it feels as though the truth itself has been wiped away.
These crimes were not aberrations. They were deliberate, calculated, and executed with zeal. The ICT’s trials were transparent, evidence-based, and praised by international observers. The fairness extended to these butchers was never afforded to their victims.
And yet, we are now told that ATM Azhar walks free. Is that not the final insult to the memory of those whose blood secured our independence?
Let us be clear: ATM Azhar and his ilk are not “reformed.” They are unrepentant predators who cloaked themselves in religion to justify carnage. They worshipped a false idol — not God, but power. They declared Pakistan the citadel of Islam even as they butchered their own Muslim brethren.
If justice has any meaning, these men must never again be allowed to speak from pulpits, stand for office, or walk with honour. Let history remember them as what they truly are: traitors, butchers, deceivers.
Even the gallows are too merciful for them. Let them rot in the same open fields where they left our martyrs to be devoured by scavengers.
The 1971 war remains the bloodiest chapter of our history. The genocide committed under the green flag of Pakistan, enabled by Jamaat’s monsters, defies all human bounds. To abandon justice now is to betray the past and endanger the future.
Justice is not served by delay, forgiveness, or cowardice. It is served by remembrance and reckoning. For our martyrs. For our children. For our sacred soil. We must continue this fight — until truth triumphs.
