Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, a senior lawmaker with the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has also been accused of looting and facilitating rape, prosecutor Syed Haider Ali said.
"Investigators have found compelling evidence of war crimes against him. We filed charges against him late Monday and the International Crimes Tribunal will now decide whether to accept the charges," he told AFP.
The tribunal, created last year to try people suspected of atrocities during the independence campaign from Pakistan, is a domestic set-up and is not endorsed by the United Nations. Opposition parties have dismissed it as a sham.
Ali said Chowdhury -- the highest ranking BNP lawmaker to be investigated by the tribunal -- is directly implicated in the murder of a high-profile Hindu businessman.
"We have found evidence that he turned his father's Chittagong residence as a torture cell during the war," Ali said, adding Chowdhury's father was a strong supporter of Pakistan and opposed then-East Pakistan's secession.
Last month, the tribunal charged its first suspect -- Delawar Hossain Sayedee, a leader of an Islamic party -- with atrocities including genocide, rape and religious persecution.
Sayedee is being held in detention along with four other suspects from his Jamaat-e-Islami party and two more, including Chowdhury, from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Both parties -- which ruled in coalition from 2001 to 2006 -- have dismissed the tribunal as a government "show trial", while the New York-based group Human Rights Watch has said legal procedures fall short of international standards.
Bangladesh's government claims some three million people were killed during the nine-month long struggle. Independent researchers say the figure is far lower.
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@AnisAqeel: Dear you seems to be a RAW agent. Wake up what all had been done in East Pakistan by Law Enforcement agencies was to control the Indian sponsored insurgency which divided the beloved muslim state of Pakistan in two pieces. Thus the war was started by rebels and do'nt blame the actions of rightful state of Pakistan. If at all the war crimes trial is to be initiated it is Indian intelligence agency RAW and mujib's party who staged all this genocide and compelled loyal muslims to react to Kafirs invasion of a muslim country. Wake up and correct your statistics of 1971 war.
@Adeel759: I appreciate your sense of humor but politely would like to deny having any political party affiliation so far.
@Anisaqeel. I totally agree with what you said, but you do belong to a party, MQM, dont deny that.
@Bangladeshi: I haven’t been to Bangladesh but I also don't have an 'iota' of doubt that hundreds of thousands of people were killed by the mainly Pakistani military supported by so called champions of Islam and their organs like Albadr and Alshams. If you are telling me that nothing happened as such then this level of denial may not be cured. You are absolutely right that some people set scores but there are no justifications to kill anyone although you are trying to justify the killing of Sheikh Mujib, the very person who fathered the nation of Bangladesh. All those who were responsible for such heinous crimes during 1970-71 must face some music as they were dancing on dead bodies of their own brothers, sisters and of whole humanity. I do not belong to any political party in Pakistan or Bangladesh and these are just independent views.
Millions of bangladeshis were killed during freedom movement;there has to be lots of people who took advantage of the movment to settle their disputes,and others that went overboard of the general principles of war-fare
never too late to punish the enemies of humanity
@AnisAqeel: Have you ever been to my Country , if not then you have got not an iota of understanding about ground realities & should refrain from commenting. The war crime trail is a well fabricated attempted to crush the opposition. The tyrant AL & Sheik MUJIB declared crusade against democracy just after independence and was justifiably killed by freedom loving Patriots. There is no democracy in our country right now under this tyrant regime & do you know that a case have been filed against the Judge of the war tribunal for being baised by the top Judges& lawyers of the country. This Judge used to do Awami student politics in his youth & in this so called "war crime trail" he is both the prosecutor as well as the judge. Do you see the shameless biasness here which the first of its kind in the world.
It is a good step towards democracy, human rights and accountability tied altogether. I hope Pakistani culprits may follow a similar suit.