Bangladesh's top Islamist party leader Motiur Rahman Nizami will be hanged for war crimes, after the country's Supreme Court upheld his death sentence on Thursday. The Jamaat-e-Islami leader's final plea to review his death sentence handed by the court in January was dismissed by a four-member Appellate Division bench headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, reported PTI.

Nizami, 72, was convicted of murder, rape and orchestrating the killing of intellectuals during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. He was found guilty of killing more than 450 people in his own village in the northwestern Pabna district. Bangladesh has executed four war criminals after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government came to power in 2008.

The Jamaat-e-Islami issued a statement calling Nizami a “victim of state-sponsored conspiracy”. It also called for a nationwide strike on May 8. “The government has taken a plan to kill Maulana Nizami in the name of trial of crimes against humanity as part of its political vengeance,” the statement said. The Jamaat-e-Islami was opposed to the country's independence from Pakistan. The party had sided with Pakistani troops in committing atrocities during the war, the report said.