War criminal Ghulam Azam dies

This Star January 11, 2013 photo shows law enforcers taking Ghulam Azam inside a prison van in front of Dhaka Central Jail just before he was taken to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University prison cell.

Convicted war criminal Ghulam Azam has died.
The former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, aged 92, was kept on life support as his physical condition deteriorated.
Brigadier (retd) Abdul Mazid Bhuiyan, director of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) where Azam was undergoing treatment, on Thursday said Azam died around 10:10pm.
His condition deteriorated around 9:00pm.
Azam was serving a 90-year jail sentence for wartime offences. He has been kept at a prison cell of the BSMMU since January 11, 2012, the day he was arrested.
"His condition has been deteriorating since last night. His blood pressure fell this morning," SM Mustafa Zaman, an associate professor of cardiology who supervised his treatment, told The Daily Star Thursday afternoon.
The body of convicted war criminal will be sent to Dhaka Central Jail from BSMMU, Farman Ali, senior jail superintendent of Dhaka Central Jail, told The Daily Star quoting the BSMMU director.
After an autopsy at the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital, the body will be handed over to the family members of the deceased on Friday, the jail super said.
International Crimes Tribunal-1 sentenced Azam to 90 years in prison on July 15 last year for masterminding crimes against humanity, genocide and other wartime offences in 1971.
He was arrested in the war crimes case on January 11, 2012, after the tribunal took the charges into cognisance. The prosecution on January 5, 2012, brought 62 specific charges against him.
On May 13, 2012, the tribunal indicted him on five charges of crimes against humanity based on 61 incidents of murder and torture of unarmed people; and conspiracy, planning, incitement and complicity to commit genocide and crimes against humanity during the 1971 war.
Ghulam Azam was ameer (chief) of East Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami during the Liberation War in 1971. He also became ameer of Bangladesh Jamaat in 1991. He left the party’s top post in 2000 through handing over charge of the party to war crimes accused Motiur Rahman Nizami.
In the nine-month war of independence, Ghulam Azam and his party played an active role in trying to prevent the birth of Bangladesh and collaborated with the Pakistan army in the killing of 3 million Bangalees and the rape of more than a quarter million women.