Bangladesh sentences 19 to death over 2004 grenade attack case
Dhaka, Bangladesh - A Bangladesh court on Wednesday sentenced 19 people to death over a 2004 grenade attack on the current Prime Minister, although a top opposition leader escaped with a life sentence.
The attack in Dhaka on a rally by Sheikh Hasina, at the time in the opposition and now Prime Minister, left her injured and killed 20 people.
Tarique Rahman, son of the then-premier and Hasina’s allyturned-archrival Khaleda Zia, was among 49 people on trial, with Rahman charged with criminal conspiracy and multiple counts of murder.
Rahman (50) was tried in absentia after he fled the country for London in 2008.
He now leads the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) from exile after Zia
was jailed in February for five years for corruption.
“We thank God for the verdict,” prosecutor Mosharraf Hossain said. “We hoped that Tarique Rahman would get the
death sentence,” he said, adding the court observed that Rahman played a key role in the attack.
Hossain said two former ministers including a powerful exhome minister and two former heads of the country’s powerful intelligence agencies were among others handed the death sentence.
A total of 15 extremists from the banned Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI), whose leader was executed in April last year, were also sentenced to death for planning and carrying out the attack.
Prosecutors said former BNP minister Abdus Salam Pintu colluded with HuJI and handed over grenades for the attack.
Hasina was addressing the rally when the grenades exploded and suffered severe injuries in one ear. Among the dead was the wife of a former president. Four years later, Hasina stormed back to power after leading a secular coalition to a landslide victory in elections in December 2008.