Bangladesh has hanged a top Islamist party figure for atrocities committed during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, the law minister said on Saturday.

Mir Quasem Ali, 63, a key financier of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was executed at Kashimpur Central Jail on the outskirts of the capital, for murder, confinement, torture and incitement to religious hatred during the war.

Ali was hanged at 10:35 p.m. (1635 GMT), Law Minister Anisul Haq told Reuters, days after Bangladesh’s highest court rejected his final appeal against the death sentence.

The execution took place amid a spate of militant attacks in the Muslim-majority nation, the most serious on July 1, when gunmen stormed a cafe in Dhaka’s diplomatic quarter and killed 20 hostages, most of them foreigners.

The war crimes tribunal set up by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2010 has sparked violence and been criticised by  opposition politicians, who say it is targeting her political foes. The government denies the accusations.

The government has also rejected allegations by human rights groups that the tribunal’s proceedings fall short of international standards, and the trials are supported by many Bangladeshis.

Hundreds of people flooded the streets of the capital to cheer the execution.

“We have waited for this day for a long 45 years,” said war veteran Akram Hossain. “Justice has finally been done.”

Media tycoon Ali is the last of a number of Jamaat leaders to be executed, having been sentenced to death in 2014 by the war crimes tribunal.

Jamaat-e-Islami, which said the charges against Ali were baseless, has called for a half-day strike for Monday in protest. It said Ali had been “hanged unjustifiably as part of the government’s conspiracy to make Jamaat-e-Islami a leaderless party.”

Ali’s family and the party alleged law enforcers abducted his son Mir Ahmed Bin Quasem, a member of his legal defence team, last month. The security forces have said they knew nothing about the matter.

Thousands of extra police and border guards were deployed in Dhaka and other major cities. Previous convictions and executions have triggered violence that has killed about 200 people, most of them Islamist party activists, and police.

Since December 2013 four other prominent Jamaat members, including former leader Motiur Rahman Nizami, and a leader of the main opposition party, have been executed for war crimes.

Official figures show about 3 million people were killed and thousands of women were raped during the war, in which some factions, including the Jamaat-e-Islami, opposed the breakaway.

The party denies its leaders committed any atrocities.

Suspected militants in Bangladesh hacked an elderly Hindu priest to death on Tuesday, in what police suspected was the latest in a spate of attacks by Islamists on minority groups in the majority-Muslim country.

Three motorcycle-borne attackers slit the throat of Ananta Gopal Ganguly, 70, while he was en route to the temple he served in the district of Jhenaidah, about 100 miles (161 km) west of Dhaka, the capital, police said.

“They almost beheaded him before they fled the scene,” said police official Hasan Hafizur Rahman.

The attack bore the hallmarks of previous killings by Islamist militants. The government banned more than one person riding pillion on a motorcycle on Monday a day after the wife of a prominent anti-terror security official was shot dead by three suspected militants on a motorbike.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for killing Ganguly, the U.S.-based monitoring service SITE said, quoting the militant group’s Amaq news agency.

Rahman dismissed the group’s claim as “baseless”, saying it had no organisational base in Bangladesh and domestic militants were responsible.

A 60-year-old Christian grocer was also hacked to death after Sunday prayers in an attack claimed by Islamic State.

Bangladesh has not seen the sort of Islamist violence that has rocked Muslim Pakistan, or even the number of attacks that India has seen over the past decade or so.

Since February last year, militants have killed more than 30 people in Bangladesh, including members of religious minorities, liberal bloggers and academics.

Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed responsibility for most of the killings, but the government denies either group has a presence in Bangladesh.

Last month, junior foreign minister Shahriar Alam told Reuters that Islamic State was trying to ride a wave of religious radicalisation by falsely claiming killings, and said there was enough evidence implicating domestic militant groups.

The government has launched a crackdown on militant groups who want to impose strict Islamic law in Bangladesh. At least eight militants have been killed in shootouts since November, including three on Tuesday, police said.

Analysts say a climate of intolerance in Bangladeshi politics has both motivated and provided cover for perpetrators of crimes of religious hatred.

The government blamed the growing violence on its political opponents linked to Islamist parties aiming to create chaos and prevent war crimes trials from going ahead.

Tension has risen since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ordered Islamist leaders suspected of atrocities during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan to be put on trial for war crimes.

Hasina’s rivals accuse her of settling political scores by hunting down members of the Jamaat-e-Islami, an ally of the main opposition group headed by former prime minister Khaleda Zia. The government denies these assertions.