Bangladeshi lawyers representing the Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party tussle following the dismissal of Abdul Quader Molla's appeal against his execution in Dhaka on Thursday. Photo: AFP

Bangladesh's top court cleared the way Thursday for the execution of a senior Islamist leader charged with war crimes, just two days after he was given a dramatic last-minute reprieve from hanging.

Chief Justice Muzammel Hossain "dismissed" Abdul Quader Molla's appeal for a final review of his death sentence, removing his last legal option against execution, which could now be carried out as early as midnight Thursday.

"There is now no legal bar to execute him," Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told AFP in the Supreme Court in the capital Dhaka.

Molla had been set on Tuesday night to become the first person put to death for massacres committed during Bangladesh's 1971 independence war, following a series of verdicts by a special war crimes court.

But a judge stayed the hanging of Molla, a leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, just 90 minutes before his scheduled execution at a jail in Dhaka, amid international concern over the fairness of the war crime trials of mainly opposition leaders.

Molla, 65, was found to have been a leader of a pro-Pakistan militia which fought against the country's independence and killed some of Bangladesh's top professors, doctors, writers and journalists.

A key opposition official, he was convicted of rape, murder and mass murder, including the killing of more than 350 unarmed civilians.

Since Wednesday, the Supreme Court has heard an appeal on whether Molla's death sentence deserved a review, with his lawyers arguing it was "a constitutional right."

However Attorney General Alam told the court that there was "no scope for a review in war-crimes cases."

AFP