Turkey on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Bangladesh for consultations after strongly protesting the execution in the country of a top Islamist leader, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.
Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at a Dhaka jail late Tuesday for the massacre of intellectuals during the 1971 independence war with Pakistan.
Turkey’s ambassador to Dhaka, Devrim Ozturk, is due to arrive back in Turkey on Thursday, the news agency added.
The Turkish foreign ministry had already strongly condemned the execution, saying it did not believe that “Nizami deserved such a punishment”.
It said that Turkey, which has abolished capital punishment, feared that the use of such methods risked creating “rancour and hatred between our Bangladeshi brothers”.
Meanwhile, in a tit-for-tat, Pakistan and Bangladesh both summoned each other’s envoys on Thursday, as the row over execution of Nizami for 1971 war crimes escalated.
“A strong protest was lodged at the unfortunate hanging of Motiur Rahman Nizami on the alleged crimes committed before December 1971 through a flawed judicial process,” Pakistan foreign office said in a statement.
Bangladeshi envoy Nazmul Huda was on Thursday summoned to the foreign office a day after Pakistan issued a statement expressing sadness over the “unfortunate hanging” and National Assembly passed a resolution condemning the execution.
The foreign office said the attempts by the government of Bangladesh to malign Pakistan, “despite our keen desire to develop brotherly relations with it, are regrettable.”
The foreign office added that the 1974 Tripartite Agreement is the cornerstone of relations between the two countries.
It needs to be emphasised that, as part of the agreement, the government of Bangladesh “decided not to proceed with the trials as an act of clemency”.
Pakistan reiterates its desire for friendly relations with Bangladesh, it added.
Hours later in Dhaka, Pakistan’s high commissioner Shuja Alam was called at the foreign office where he was handed over a strong note verbale.
“Pakistan’s high commissioner Shuja Alam was called at the foreign office where our secretary for bilateral affairs Mizanur Rahman handed him over a strong note verbale,” a Bangladesh foreign office spokesman said.
The note verbale noted that Pakistan continued to “present a misleading, limited and partial interpretation of the underlying premise of the Tripartite Agreement of April 1974 which is totally unacceptable to Bangladesh”.
It added: “The Tripartite Agreement in no way restricted Bangladesh from prosecuting its own nationals for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity”.
