(From AFP)
Clashes erupted in Bangladesh Wednesday after the execution of a top Islamist leader, heightening tension in a country reeling from a string of killings of secular and liberal activists.
Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at a Dhaka jail late Tuesday for the massacre of intellectuals during the 1971 independence war with Pakistan.
Police said they fired rubber bullets after hundreds of Nizami’s supporters attacked them with stones in the northwestern city of Rajshahi, where a liberal professor was killed by suspected Islamists in April.
“There were 500 Jamaat activists who were protesting the execution. We fired rubber bullets as they became violent,” Rajshahi police inspector Selim Badsah said, adding that about 20 were arrested. Read More