(reopens FGN 15)

The square, adjacent to premier Dhaka University, was decorated with war crime suspects' effigies hanging from lamp posts and bamboo polls. The protests, triggered by a special tribunal's "lenient" verdict four days ago against Mollah, continued after the grand rally while protestors prepared for another candle-lit vigil for the fifth consecutive night. The same tribunal, however, delivered its first judgment last month, sentencing a former JI leader and Islamic preacher in TV, Abul Kalam Azad, to death for murder, rape and other crimes. "We will stay back on the street across the country as well as online until the demands are met... We won't go home until we are satisfied," the youngsters' statement said. Identical demonstrations were also held in major cities, including Chittagong, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Khulna while reports of rallies of expatriate Bangladeshis were also received from different major world cities expressing solidarity with Shahbagh protestors. The rally began on the same day when JI enforced a nationwide general strike demanding a halt on their stalwarts' trials on war crime charges. The development also apparently prompted the government to announce a decision to challenge the verdict against Mollah to the apex court. JI, however, on Thursday called for a day-long strike in southeastern Chittagong alone tomorrow in protest against police actions in the port city during their protests on Tuesday, when the party says four of its supporters died. At least nine people, including four in Chitagong, were killed in clashes in the previous 10 days. Nine other high-profile suspects were now being tried in two special tribunals for "crimes against humanity" during the Liberation War against Pakistan in 1971 when officially three million people were killed and 200,000 women were raped. Eight of them are senior JI leaders along with two men from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).