Bangladeshi Islamist to be executed 17 July 2013 Last updated at 09:02 A leading Islamist politician in Bangladesh has been sentenced to death over war crimes committed during the 1971 war of independence with Pakistan. Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, a key figure in the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was accused of mass killing and torture and convicted of five of seven charges. Prosecutors say he led a militia accused of killing leaders and intellectuals supporting independence. The party's spiritual leader was jailed for 90 years on Monday. Thousands of people took to the streets on Tuesday to protest against Ghulam Azam's sentence handed down by the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka. Hundreds killed At least two people were killed when police clashed with demonstrators. The tribunal was set up in 2010 by the current Awami League-led government to try alleged local collaborators of the Pakistani army during Bangladesh's war of independence. More than a hundred people have been killed since January in violent protests prompted by verdicts handed down by the tribunal. The trials have come in for some criticism, with Jamaat-e-Islami saying they are politically motivated and Human Rights Watch describing them as "flawed." Mr Mujahid was a student leader in 1971 and among those who supported a unified Pakistan. Like many other Jamaat leaders he went into hiding soon after independence, but resurfaced after Gen Ziaur Rahman came to power in a military coup in 1977. He later became social welfare minister in the BNP-led government from 2001-2006. He is highly regarded for his oratory and organisational skills, but critics say he say he was an al-Badr leader responsible for the killings of a number of pro-independence Bangladeshi leaders and intellectuals. Official Bangladeshi figures say as many as three million people died in the nine-month war of secession but independent researchers put the number at around 500,000.