Process starts by June
The government would initiate the process of banning Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami by June, said Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque yesterday.
“We have no plan to ban religion-based political parties but we surely have a plan to ban Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh as a party involved in war crimes [during the Liberation War],” he told reporters.
He did not elaborate on how it would be done.
Asked if the ban would be in line with the verdicts of the war crimes trials, Mozammel Haque said, “It does not matter what the verdicts of the war crimes trials are.”
The minister said this on the sidelines of a programme titled Muktir Utshab (festival of liberation) organised by Liberation War Museum at the playground of Dhaka University.
The remarks came more than seven months after the High Court declared Jamaat's registration with the Election Commission illegal, rendering it ineligible to take part in elections.
The petition, on which the verdict was delivered, said Jamaat was a religion-based political party and did not believe in the independence and sovereignty of Bangladesh.
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