Law and Justice minister Anisul Huq told AFP the 73-year-old leader was hanged just before midnight (1800 GMT) after he refused to seek mercy from the country's president. "He was executed between 11:50 pm and 12:00 am midnight," Huq said. The execution has sparked fears it could trigger a fresh wave of violence in the majority Sunni Muslim country, which is reeling after a string of killings of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities by suspected Islamist militants.
Nizami is the fifth and highest-ranked opposition leader - and the fourth from Jamaat - to have been executed since December 2013 for war crimes despite global criticism of their trials. "We've been waiting for this day," Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters, adding that people "will remember this day forever". Hours before the hanging, family members of Nizami met him for the last time at the Dhaka Central Jail, as hundreds of police and elite security forces cordoned off the British colonial-era prison. Security has been stepped up in the capital and in Nizami's home district of Pabna in the country's west, with magistrates being deployed to hand down instant prison terms to any law-breakers.
"If anyone tries to commit sabotage, our security forces are ready to identify them and take proper measures," Khan told reporters. - Jamaat called a nation-wide strike for Thursday in protest against the execution, saying the charges against Nizami, a former government minister, were false and aimed at eliminating the leadership of the party.
"Nizami has been deprived of justice. He's a victim of political vengeance," the party's acting leader Maqbul Ahmad said in a statement posted on Jamaat's website. But the execution was cheered by secular protesters, hundreds of whom gathered outside the jail and at a square in central Dhaka to celebrate what they called "a historic moment". Nizami took over as party leader in 2000 and played a key role in the victory of an Islamist-allied government in the 2001 general election. He was made a key minister in the Islamist-allied cabinet of 2001-6.
Rights groups say the trials fell short of global standards and lack international oversight, while the government says they are needed to heal the wounds of the conflict. Amnesty International had called for an immediate halt to Nizami's execution, citing concerns over the fairness of the trials.