Updated

A special tribunal dealing with war crimes involving Bangladesh's 1971 independence war has convicted and sentenced a leading war collaborator to death for crimes including mass killing, arson and looting.

The head judge of a three-member panel, Obaidul Hasan, delivered the verdict Wednesday in a packed courtroom in the nation's capital, Dhaka, against 79-year-old Abdus Subhan of the Jamaat-e-Islami political party.

Subhan is the ninth senior leader of the party convicted of such crimes after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina initiated the long-stalled war crimes trials in 2010.

Subhan faced nine charges that included the killing of 400 people in several villages in northern Bangladesh.

Bangladesh says Pakistani soldiers and their collaborators killed 3 million people and raped 200,000 women during the nine-month war.