Bangladesh top court lifts ban on country's largest Muslim party
Bangladesh has restored the registration of the country's largest Muslim party, more than a decade after it was banned by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government.
Sunday's Supreme Court decision means the Jamaat-e-Islami party can now be formally listed with the Election Commission, paving the way for its participation in the next general election, which the interim government has promised to hold by June next year.
Jamaat-e-Islami lawyer Shishir Monir said the ruling would allow a 'democratic, inclusive and multiparty system' in the Muslim-majority country of 170 million people.
'We hope that Bangladeshis, regardless of their ethnicity or religious identity, will vote for Jamaat and that the parliament will be vibrant with constructive debates,' Monir told journalists.
The party had appealed for a review of a 2013 high court order cancelling its registration after Hasina's government was ousted in August by a student-led nationwide uprising.
Hasina, 77, fled to India and is now being tried in absentia over her crackdown last year, described by prosecutors as a 'systematic attack' on protesters, which according to the United Nations, killed up to 1,400 people.
The Supreme Court decision on Jamaat-e-Islami came after it overturned a conviction against ATM Azharul Islam, one of the party's key leaders, on Tuesday.
Islam was sentenced to death in 2014 for rape, murder and genocide during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. Jamaat-e-Islami supported Pakistan during the war, a role that still sparks anger among many Bangladeshis today.
'We, as individuals or as a party, are not beyond making mistakes,' Jamaat-e-Islami leader Shafiqur Rahman said after Islam's conviction was overturned without specifying what he was referring to.
'We seek your pardon if we have done anything wrong,' he said.
The party's members were rivals of Hasina's father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the Awami League, who would become Bangladesh's founding president.
Hasina banned Jamaat-e-Islami during her tenure and cracked down on its leaders.
In May, Bangladesh's interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, banned the Awami League, pending the outcome of legal proceedings over its crackdown on last year's mass protests.
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