Bangla Prez rejects extremists’ petitions

3 HuJI men had appealed against death sentence

Dhaka, April 9: A top Islamist extremist under the sentence of death has lost his last hope of avoiding the gallows after Bangladesh’s president rejected a mercy plea, an official said Sunday.

Bangladesh’s highest court last month upheld a 2008 death sentence on Mufti Abdul Hannan and two associates for an attack on a shrine that left three people dead and injured the British high commissioner at the time.

Last month the trio wrote to president Abdul Hamid seeking clemency. “The president has rejected all three mercy petitions,” his press secretary Joynal Abedin said. Jail authorities would now go ahead with the executions, deputy

inspector general of prisons Touhidul Islam said.

Authorities have not announced a date but the executions are expected sometime this month.

Hannan headed the Harkat-ul Jihad Al Islami (HuJI) group. The attack on the British ambassador in 2004 was among the most high profile of a series of assaults by the group across Bangladesh in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The decision to reject clemency comes weeks after militants attempted to free Hannan by hurling bombs at police vans as the police transferred him between prisons.

By the time Hannan was arrested in late 2005, HuJI on a church, secular gatherings and mosques used by Islam’s minority sects had killed more than 100 people in attacks. Bangladesh has suffered a spate of attacks on secular activists, foreigners and religious minorities in recent years.

Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group have claimed responsibility in some cases but Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s secular government has pinned the blame on local outfits.

There has been a resurgence of Islamist extremist attacks in recent weeks, with at least three being claimed by ISIS.

The 2004 attack on British ambassador was one of the most high profile of a series of assaults by the HuJI group