DHAKA: State Minister for Law Qamrul Islam said Jamaat-e-Islami politics would be banned on the basis of the court verdict declaring the Fifth Constitution Amendment illegal, once the government gets copy of the judgment in hand.

“Politics of Jamaat would be proscribed as it has patronized militants,” said the minister at a discussion meeting in the city Saturday, at a time when almost all the top leaders of the religion-based political party have been arrested under a crackdown.

The Supreme Court has declared the Fifth Constitution Amendment illegal, paving the way for the new Awami League-led centre-left government to ban Islamic political groups in course of time, legal experts said. This will also help the Government restore the 1972 Constitution founded on secular spirit and values of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.

“If any action is not taken against Jamaat, Bangladesh would also have the same fate as of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Qamrul told the meeting titled `Trial of war criminals’, organized by Sheikh Rassel Memorial Academy at the National Press Club.

Indicating the arrested senior leaders of Jamaat, Qumrul Islam said, “Some of the identified war criminals have already been arrested and they would be brought to book for committing war crimes.”

Describing trial of war criminals as a continuous process, he also said identified war criminals would be tried on priority basis. “Whoever they may be, none would be spared.”

Making a dig at BNP, he said the opposition party is “trying hard to save the war criminals, as they are not willing to see them tried”.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is set to unravel the full version of the verdict on the much-talked-about case of repeal of the constitution fifth amendment anytime this month (July) to end a long wait for what comes out of the radical change in the country’s fundamental law.

Competent sources said the apex court has already completed the main text of the briefly pronounced judgment, which is now being reexamined by the judges.

The original constitution of 1972 had embodied four fundamental state principles: nationalism, socialism, democracy, and secularism.

Religious politics is proscribed under sections of 12 and 38 of the 1972 constitution while the section 12 singly prohibits any kind of communal politics in Bangladesh.

The fifth constitution amendment scrapped the section 12 and also recast the section 38 that cleared the path for doing religion-based politics.

BDST: 1831HRS, JULY 17, 2010