Bangladesh's top court Monday upheld a life sentence for a firebrand Islamist preacher convicted of war crimes, rejecting calls for him to be hanged. The Supreme Court stood by its 2014 decision to jail Delwar Hossain Sayeedi for life over atrocities committed during Bangladesh's 1971 war.

Sayeedi's lawyers wanted the prominent member of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh's largest Islamist party, acquitted while government attorneys sought capital punishment for the 77-year-old cleric. "The court rejected the review appeals by both sides," Sayeedi's lawyer Tanvir Al Amin told AFP. Five Jamaat leaders, including mastermind Motiur Rahman Nizami, have been executed for their part in bloody crimes during the war.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017