Al-Badr (East Pakistan)

The Al-Badr was the paramilitary wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) that earned infamy for its collaboration with the Pakistan Army against the Bengali nationalist movement in the Bangladesh Liberation War. The group is blamed for organising the mass killings of Bengali civilians, religious and ethnic minorities. The group is identified as one of the leading perpetrators of the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities. The present chief of the Jamaat, Maulana Motiur Rahman Nizami has headed the Al-Badr organisation as the all-Pakistan Commander in Chief during the war. The group was banned by the independent government of Bangladesh, but most of its members had fled the country during and after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which led to Bangladesh's independence.