The ruling allows the nation’s biggest Muslim party to contest the upcoming general election, anticipated to be held by June next year.
Bangladesh has revived the registration of the nation’s largest Muslim party, over a decade since it was suspended by the government of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Sunday’s Supreme Court verdict allows the Jamaat-e-Islami party to be officially registered with the Election Commission, making it eligible to join the next general election, which the interim government has pledged to arrange by June next year.
Jamaat-e-Islami attorney Shishir Monir said the decision would enable a “democratic, inclusive and multiparty system” in the 170 million-people Muslim-majority nation.
We are hoping Bangladeshis of all ethnicities and religions would vote for Jamaat and the parliament becomes colourful with positive debates,” Monir informed the press.
The party had requested the overturning of a 2013 high court decision revoking its registration following the toppling of Hasina’s government in August by a student-driven countrywide revolt.
Hasina, 77, went into hiding in India and faces trial in absentia for her crackdown a year ago, which prosecutors called a “systematic attack” on the demonstrators, killing an estimated 1,400 people as reported by the United Nations.
Islam was convicted of death in 2014 of rape, murder and genocide during Bangladesh’s war of liberation from Pakistan in 1971. Jamaat-e-Islami aided Pakistan in the war, a fact that still enrages many Bangladeshis today.
“We, individually or as a party, are not above committing mistakes,” Jamaat-e-Islami chief Shafiqur Rahman said when Islam’s conviction was overturned without elaborating on what he meant.
