Jamaat calls Bangladesh shutdown for release of leader

Bangladesh's Jamaat-e-Islami party has called for a country-wide shutdown to press its demand for release of its top leader, Delwar Sayedee, whose death sentence was commuted by the Supreme Court Wednesday.

The 48-hour strike will commence for one day from 6 a.m. Thursday and will resume for another day from 6 a.m. Sunday, bdnews24.com quoted acting party chief Mokbul Ahmad as saying Wednesday.

The Islamist party said it would hold prayers Friday for its leader and agitations Saturday.

Earlier in the day, the Bangladesh Supreme Court commuted Sayedee's death sentence to "imprisonment till death".

The full bench of Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice Md Muzammel Hossain ruled that the prominent war crime convict would have to remain imprisoned "for the rest of his natural life".

In February last year, the country's war crimes tribunal gave the death penalty to Sayedee on two counts of crimes against humanity.

The Jamaat-e-Islami leader, known as 'Deilya Razakar', was found guilty of crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971.

Sayedee's trial began in the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in 2011 on over 20 war crime charges against him.

The top Jamaat-e-Islami leader was given the death penalty for two -- the murders of Ibrahim Kutti and Bisabali, and for setting fire to Hindu households in Pirojpur district in 1971.