Across the globe, over a million people participated in the funeral prayers of Delwar Hossain Sayedee, a prominent jailed Islamist opposition leader in Bangladesh and a world renowned Islamic scholar who died at the age of 83 due to a heart attack.
Sayedee, vice-president of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party, died in a prison hospital early on Monday evening, just over a decade since his conviction by a draconian war crimes court. Sayedee was sentenced to death in 2013 by a war-crimes tribunal.
Alone in Bangladesh, more than one lakh people attended Tuesday’s funeral for Sayedee.
Thousands of protesters chanting anti-government slogans marched in Bangladesh on Monday hours after Sayedee’s death.
The protesters were chanting anti-government slogans throughout the rally.
Jamaat-e-Islami announced Sayedee’s death on its Facebook page, where it accused the authorities of “slowly turning him into a martyr without treatment in the prison.”
“We won’t let the blood of Sayedee go in vain,” supporters shouted, with many blaming the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, AFP news agency reported.
Sayedee, also known as Allama Sayedee, dedicated his life to teaching the Qur’ān and advocating for the rights of Muslims in Bangladesh.
In a statement issued by the acting leader of Jamaat, Professor Mujibur Rahman, he expressed “deep shock and condolence at the death of Jamaat-e-Islami’s Nayeb-e-Ameer, globally acclaimed preacher of the Qur’ān, and former MP Allama Delwar Hossain Sayedee.”
“This noble preacher of Islam… struggled throughout his life to establish Islam. The torture and repression by the government could not sway him from this ideology and true path,” he said.
He continued, “He has become [the] worst victim of injustice as he has been sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with a false and fabricated case. His death is a significant loss for the global Islamic movement.”
