Jamaat should be tried as party of war criminals: Menon

Workers Party President Rashed Khan Menon on Tuesday said the Jamaat-e-Islam should be brought to justice as a party of war criminals and their properties also should be confiscated.

"Jamaat committed crimes against humanity during the Liberation War . . . they killed intellectuals, the greatest sons of the soil," he said adding that the 195 listed Pakistani soldiers should also be tried on war crimes charges in line with the 1974 tripartite agreement.

The Workers Party president was addressing a discussion organised by Mugda thana unit of Workers Party marking the Victory Day-2015 at Haider Ali High School playground here.

Workers Party leaders Mostafa Alamgir Ratan, Abul Hossain, Kishor Roy, Murshida Akhtar Nahar, Jahangir Alam Fazlu, Advocate Humayun Kabir, Jamal Uddin, Shamsul Arefin and Jahidul Islam, among others, joined the discussion with Mugda thana unit secretary Omar Faruk in the chair.

Menon said a non-communal democratic state was born through the Liberation War in 1971. But after assassination of the undisputed leader, Father of Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the darkness of communal autocracy had come back in the country, he added.

Menon thanked the people to retrieve the spirit of Liberation War in the country through long struggle.

"Even now national and international cliques are hatching conspiracy to spoil the democratic practices and development activities of the country," he said.