Dhaka – Mir Quasem Ali, the former commander of wartime vigilante group al-Badr force, which carried out atrocities on civilians, was buried at his village home in Manikganj after he was executed for crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation war.

The war crimes convict was buried at Harirampur sub-district despite local residents wanted not to receive him to bury on Manikganj soil.

The war criminal was taken there amid tightened security early hours of Sunday. He was buried beside a mosque at the village of Chala at about 3:15am.

Quasem, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at Kashimpur jail on Saturday for war crimes.

Bangladesh’s highest court on Tuesday rejected a final appeal by Quasem against the death sentence he had been handed for crimes committed during the nine-month war.

Quasem Ali, 64, received the death sentence for crimes including the abduction, killing and dumping bodies of several people in a river in southeastern Chittagong district.

He was also convicted of several other crimes against humanity that took place during the 1971 conflict.

He was sentenced to death in November 2014 by a special war crimes tribunal, styled International Crimes Tribunal, for crimes against humanity committed during the war.

An appeals court had earlier upheld his death before Ali launched an appeal against that decision. He did not exhaust the last legal provision to seek presidential mercy.

Ali, who is also a business tycoon in Bangladesh, was one of the founders of the al-Badr force commissioned by the Pakistani military to carry out attacks on civilians during the war. Ali owned businesses including, bank, hospital, television, pharmaceutical industry, television channel and newspaper. He was also member of a number of trusts founded by oil-rich Middle Eastern countries.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina established the special war crimes tribunal in 2010 to prosecute local agents of the Pakistani army who were responsible for atrocities against unarmed civilians.

Bangladesh estimates nearly 3 million people died and approximately 200,000 women were raped during the war.

An earlier initiative to prosecute the war crimes was called off after the assassination of Bangladesh’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was Sheikh Hasina’s father, in 1975.

Motiur Rahman Nizami, chief of Jamaat-e-Islami party, Ali Ahsan Mumannad Mujahid, Kamaruzzaman, Abdul Kader Mollah of the same party and Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury have already been executed for war crimes.

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