Harkat-ul Jihad militant Md Delwar Hossain Ripon has sought presidential clemency over the death sentenced handed down to him along with two others for grenade attack on UK envoy.
“Ripon filed the plea around 11am Monday and we have sent it to authorities,” Abdus Sagir Miah, senior jail super of Sylhet Central Jail, told the Dhaka Tribune.
“Militant leader death row convict Mufti Hannan is yet to seek clemency,” said Mizanur Rahman, jail superintendent of Kashimpur Central Jail.
On March 21, the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division released the full text of its verdict reconfirming death penalties handed to Mufti Hannan and two accomplices for a failed assassination attempt on the then British high commissioner to Bangladesh Anwar Choudhury.
The full verdict reached to Kashimpur Jail on Tuesday night.
Three people were killed and UK envoy Anwar sustained injuries in the grenade attack carried out during his visit to Shahjalal Shrine in Sylhet city on May 21, 2004.
The commissioner reported being hit in the stomach by a bomb, which then fell on the ground near the foot of the district chief and exploded “with a big bang.” Sixty-nine others were also injured.
The UK foreign secretary at the time, Jack Straw, said he was “deeply shocked” by the attack.
The HujiB militant group was formed in 1992 and claims to have carried out at least 14 attacks, killing more than 100 people in the pursuit of establishing Shariah Law in Bangladesh.
A Sylhet court in December 2008 sentenced the trio to death and two others to life-time imprisonment for their roles in the attack. The High Court upheld the sentences in February 2016.
The same month, the death-row convicts appealed to the Appellate Division but to no avail. Their review petitions filed challenging the Appellate Division verdict were also rejected.
Hannan was also sentenced to death for the 2001 Ramna Batamul bombing, in which ten people were killed.
Thursday, June 04, 2026
