Bangladesh’s Supreme Court restores Jamaat-e-Islami’s celebration registration

Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami chief A.T.M. Azharul Islam (C) gestures after he was launched from jail in Dhaka on May 28, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Bangladesh’s Supreme Court on Sunday (June 1, 2025) ordered the Election Commission to revive the rightwing Jamaat-e-Islami’s celebration registration, almost eight months after the interim authorities lifted a ban on it, clearing the way in which for its participation in future elections.

Court officers stated the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, led by Chief Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed, directed the fee to revive the celebration’s registration.

The apex court docket, on the similar time, stated it was as much as the Election Commission (EC) to determine if Jamaat might contest polls utilizing its conventional “scale” image.

The EC scrapped the registration of Jamaat, which was against Bangladesh’s 1971 independence from Pakistan, in December 2018 according to a High Court ruling.

In 2013, the Bangladesh Supreme Court cancelled the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami, ruling that the celebration is unfit to contest nationwide elections.

Former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s authorities slapped a complete ban on the celebration days forward of her ouster on August 5, 2024 in a violent mass motion led by a platform referred to as Students in opposition to Discrimination (SAD).

Jaamaat and several other different events had backed SAD.

After Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, the celebration appealed for a overview of the 2013 court docket order banning it.

“Today concludes the decade-long authorized battle. We hope Bangladesh could have a vibrant parliament after this verdict. We hope voters will vote for the Jamaat candidate of their selection now,” one among Jamaat’s main counsels Mohammad Shishir Manir stated.

The verdict boosted Jamaat additional because it got here per week after one among its high leaders of the celebration and a dying row convict, ATM Azharul Islam, was freed by the identical apex court docket. Islam had been going through prices of committing crimes in opposition to humanity by siding with the Pakistani troops throughout the Liberation War.

The interim authorities’s regulation adviser Asif Nazrul had instantly welcomed Islam’s acquittal and stated, “The credit for creating the scope for establishing this justice goes to the July-August (2024) mass movement leadership”.

The interim authorities led by Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus just lately disbanded Hasina’s Awami League.

In the absence of the Awami League, its arch-rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by former prime minister Khaleda Zia, has emerged as the primary actor within the nation’s political enviornment, though it has distanced itself from its long-time ally, Jamaat.

Bangladesh below Hasina’s premiership in 2009 initiated a authorized course of to strive collaborators of Pakistani forces throughout the Liberation War on prices of crimes in opposition to humanity and genocide within the nation’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) Following trials, six high Jamaat-e-Islami leaders and one senior BNP determine had been executed after the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division upheld their convictions and sentences handed down by the tribunal.

The tribunal is now set to strive senior Awami League leaders and authorities officers, together with policemen who served below Hasina’s authorities, on equivalent prices for its crackdown on final yr’s violent anti-government protests.

According to a UN rights workplace report, some 1,400 individuals had been killed between July 15 and August 15 final yr as violence continued even after the autumn of the previous regime.