Gallows sealed for Mufti Hannan, 2 others

The Supreme Court has upheld the death penalties handed down to militant leader Mufti Abdul Hannan and two other HujiB men for the 2004 grenade attack on Hazrat Shahjalal shrine. A three-member Appellate Division bench led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha gave the verdict on Sunday, dismissing a review petition filed by the death convicts. On February 23, Mufti Hannan filed the petition with the Supreme Court seeking review of an Appellate Division verdict that upheld his death sentence for the 2004 murder attempt on former British envoy Anwar Choudhury. Attorney General Mahbubey Alam later told reporters that after the Appellate Division's ruling there is no legal bar left to carrying out their sentences. The court's decision would soon be conveyed to the convicts. “They may attempt a presidential mercy petition, begging for their lives. If they do not, they will be hanged within two or three days,” said Mahbubey. A death warrant was read out to the chief of a faction of Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh (HujiB) and his two cohorts, also death-row convicts, Sharif Shahedul Alam and Md Delwar Hossain in early February. Hannan was also sentenced to death for the 2001 Ramna Batamul bombing where ten people were killed. Militants tried to assassinate Anwar, the then UK high commissioner, at the shrine of Hazrat Shahjalal in Sylhet on May 21, 2004, but their efforts were in vain. However, three people were killed in the attack which left over 70 others injured. In December 2008, a Sylhet court sentenced the trio to death, and two others to life imprisonment for the attack. The High Court upheld the sentence in February last year. Later in the same month, the death row convicts appealed to the Appellate Division but to no avail, as the death penalty was upheld there as well. The Appellate Division’s 65-page full verdict was published on January 17. Since its formation in 1992, the militant outfit has carried out at least 14 attacks, killing more than 100 people in the pursuit of establishing Shariah Law in Bangladesh.