In 2010 the government of Bangladesh, headed by the secularist Awami League, established a war crimes tribunal to investigate war crimes perpetrated during Bangladesh's bloody 1971 War of Independence from Pakistan. In February 2013 Abdul Quader Molla, a leader of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party (a small Islamist party within the opposition coalition), was sentenced to life imprisonment by the tribunal. The perceived mildness of the sentence was condemned by Bangladesh's secularist bloggers and writers, who helped organize the 2013 Shahbag protests in response, calling for the death penalty for Molla. The protestors quickly expanded their demands to include outlawing the Jamaat-e-Islami party itself for its role in the 1971 war.