Nurul Haque Nur, member secretary of Gono Odhikar Parishad, has said that the Awami League government executed some “innocent” leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami on “India’s prescription”. “Jamaat is not legally banned. But it is the Awami League that has executed some innocent leaders of Jamaat, in the name of war crimes trial, prescribed by India,” Nur said. Also read: Nur defends top aide Tarek’s “offensive remarks” on Hindu religious scripture Speaking at a Gono Odhikar Parishad rally in front of the National Press Club on Wednesday, he said, “Jamaat has held a rally in Dhaka for the first time in 10 years. Three ministers of Awami League said it was a political decision by the government.” “I believe Jamaat’s ideology and its politics will not allow it to do anything that benefits the Awami League. But there is no last word when it comes to politics. We do not know Jamaat’s current position. But it is clear from their statements that they will be on the streets,” Nur said. Also read: Jamaat holds first rally after a decade, demands polls under caretaker govt "We need everyone’s support to overthrow this government. So, we are with BNP, Jamaat, Jatiya Party, Charmonai …whoever will be on the streets. We are not in favour of keeping this government in power even for a single week,” he added. Referring to the recent Barishal city corporation election, Nur said, “You have seen a candidate being beaten up and left in a bloodied state. He is a veteran figure, a respected figure among Muslim scholars. We condemn this attack on him.” Also read: Awami League's policy unchanged despite allowing Jamaat rally: Home Minister

A 21-year-old Russian soldier facing the first war crimes trial since Moscow invaded Ukraine pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing an unarmed civilian. Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin could get life in prison for shooting a a 62-year-old Ukrainian man in the head through an open car window in the northeastern Sumy region on Feb. 28, four days into the invasion. Shishimarin, a captured member of a Russian tank unit, was prosecuted under a section of the Ukrainian criminal code that addresses the laws and customs of war. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova previously said her office was readying war crimes cases against 41 Russian soldiers for offenses that included bombing civilian infrastructure, killing civilians, rape and looting. It was not immediately clear how many of the suspects are in Ukrainian hands and how many would be tried in absentia. Prosecutors plan to continue presenting evidence against Shishimarin following his guilty plea, although the trial is like to be shorter. As the inaugural war-crimes case in Ukraine, Shishimarin’s prosecution was being watched closely. Investigators have been collecting evidence of possible war crimes to bring before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Also Read: Fall of Mariupol appears at hand; fighters leave steel plant Venediktova’s office has said it was looking into more than 10,700 potential war crimes involving more than 600 suspects, including Russian soldiers and government officials. With help from foreign experts, prosecutors are investigating allegations that Russian troops violated Ukrainian and international law by killing, torturing and abusing possibly thousands of Ukrainian civilians. Shishimarin’s trial opened Friday, when he made a brief court appearance while lawyers and judges discussed prosecedural matters. After his plea on Wednesday, the proceedings were continued until Thursday, when the trial is expecgted to resume in a large courtroom to accomodate more journalists. Ukrainian authorities posted a few details on social media last week from their investigation in his case. Shishimarin was among a group of Russian troops that fled Ukrainian forces on Feb. 28, according to Venediktova’s Facebook account. The Russians allegedly fired at a private car and seized the vehicle, then drove to Chupakhivka, a village about 200 miles east of Kyiv. On the way, the prosecutor-general alleged, the Russian soldiers saw a man walking on the sidewalk and talking on his phone. Shyshimarin was ordered to kill the man so he wouldn’t be able to report them to Ukrainian military authorities. Venediktova did not identify who gave the order. Shyshimarin fired his Kalashnikov rifle through the open window and hit the victim in the head, Venediktova wrote. “The man died on the spot just a few dozen meters from his house,” she said. The Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, posted a short video on May 4 of Shyshimarin speaking in front of camera and briefly describing how he shot the man. The SBU described the video as “one of the first confessions of the enemy invaders.” “I was ordered to shoot,” Shyshimarin said. “I shot one (round) at him. He falls. And we kept on going.” Russia is believed to be preparing war crime trials for Ukrainian soldiers.  

Journalists packed a small courtroom in Kyiv for the trial of a captured Russian soldier accused of killing a Ukrainian civilian in the early days of the war — the first of dozens of war crimes cases that Ukraine’s top prosecutor said her office is pursuing. As the trial of 21-year-old Russian Sgt. Vadim Shyshimarin got underway in the capital, Russian forces suffered heavy losses in a Ukrainian attack that destroyed a pontoon bridge they were using to try to cross a river in the east, Ukrainian and British officials said in another sign of Moscow’s struggle to salvage a war gone awry. Ukraine’s airborne command released photos and video of what it said was a damaged Russian pontoon bridge over the Siversky Donets River in Bilohorivka and at least 73 destroyed or damaged Russian military vehicles nearby. Britain’s Defense Ministry said Russia lost “significant armored maneuver elements” of at least one battalion tactical group in the attack. A Russian battalion tactical group consists of about 1,000 troops. “Conducting river crossings in a contested environment is a highly risky maneuver and speaks to the pressure the Russian commanders are under to make progress in their operations in eastern Ukraine,” the ministry said in its daily intelligence update. In other developments, a move by Finland and, potentially, Sweden to join NATO was thrown into question when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country is “not of a favorable opinion” toward the idea. He accused Sweden and other Scandinavian countries of supporting Kurdish militants and others Turkey considers terrorists. Erdogan did not say outright that he would block the two nations from joining NATO. But the military alliance makes its decisions by consensus, meaning that each of its 30 member countries has a veto over who can join. Also Read: Russia takes losses in failed river crossing, officials say An expansion of NATO would be a blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who undertook the war in what he said was a bid to thwart the alliance’s eastward advance. But in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, other countries along Russia’s flank fear they could be next. With Russia’s offensive in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, seeming to turn increasingly into a grinding war of attrition and Ukraine pleading for more arms to fend off the better-equipped Russians, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief announced plans to give Kyiv an additional 500 million euros ($520 million) to buy heavy weapons. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov welcomed the heavy weapons making their way to the front lines but admitted there is no quick end to the war in sight. “We are entering a new, long-term phase of the war,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “Extremely difficult weeks await us. How many there will be? No one can say for sure.” The battle for the Donbas has turned into a village-by-village, back-and-forth slog with no major breakthroughs on either side and little ground gained. In his nightly address Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said no one can predict how long the war will last but that his country’s forces have been making progress, including retaking six Ukrainian towns or villages in the past day. Fierce fighting has been taking place on the Siversky Donets River near the city of Severodonetsk, said Oleh Zhdanov, an independent Ukrainian military analyst. The Ukrainian military has launched counterattacks but has failed to halt Russia’s advance, he said. “The fate of a large portion of the Ukrainian army is being decided — there are about 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers,” he said. The Ukrainian military chief for the Luhansk region of the Donbas said Friday that troops have taken nearly full control of Rubizhne, a city with a prewar population of around 55,000. In the ruined southern port of Mariupol, Ukrainian fighters holed up in a steel plant faced continued Russian attacks on the last stronghold of resistance in the city. Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, said his troops will hold out “as long as they can” despite shortages of ammunition, food, water and medicine. And in Kyiv, Ukrainian soldiers dressed in white protective suits loaded the bodies of Russian soldiers onto refrigerated train cars on Friday. The bodies were wrapped in white body bags and stacked several layers deep.