Abdul
Quader Mollah, found guilty of war crimes committed during the 1971 war
of independence from Pakistan, was due to be hanged at Dhaka Central
Jail just after midnight on Wednesday, but his lawyers earned a
last-minute reprieve.
Later
in the morning, lawyers met at the Supreme Court's appeals division and
will resume arguments on Thursday, a state prosecutor said. The stay of
execution remains until the appeal against the death penalty is
resolved, he added.
Mollah
is assistant secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which is
barred from contesting elections but plays a key role in the opposition
movement led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
He
is one of five Islamist leaders condemned to death by Bangladesh's
International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), set up in 2010 to investigate
atrocities perpetrated during the 1971 conflict, in which three million
people died.
Critics
of the ICT say it has been used as a political tool by Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina, who is locked in a long and poisonous feud with BNP
leader Begum Khaleda Zia, as a way of weakening the opposition as Jan. 5
elections approach.
But
many Bangladeshis support the court, believing that those convicted of
war crimes should be punished, underlining how the events of 42 years
ago still resonate in an impoverished nation of 160 million deeply
divided over the role for Islam.
In
sporadic violence late on Tuesday, when Mollah's fate was still
uncertain, at least three people were killed, including a mother and her
7-year-old daughter who were burned to death when pro-Jamaat activists
torched their truck north of Dhaka.
In
the capital, hundreds of people angrily chanted for Mollah's execution
to be carried out. The drama around Mollah's fate has worsened the rift
between Hasina and Khaleda, whose enmity has overshadowed Bangladesh
politics for more than 20 years.
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