Death for five Mujib killers

A Dhaka court, which issued death warrants against the five convicts, has asked the senior jail superintendent of the Dhaka Central Jail to take necessary steps to execute them between the 21st and the 28th day in accordance with the jail code.

The convicts, now counting days for walking into the gallows, are Lt Col Syed Farooq Rahman, Lt Col Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Maj Bazlul Huda, Maj (Lancer) AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed and Lt Col (Artillery) Mohiuddin Ahmed.

The Dhaka District and Sessions Judge, Abdul Gafur, passed the order after he received the final verdict of the five-member special bench of the appellate division that upheld the death sentence earlier handed down by the high court to 12 killers, including the five in the condemned cells, on November 19.

Six of the convicts are living abroad. The other convict, Lt Col Abdul Aziz Pasha, who had taken asylum in Zimbabwe, died in June 2001.

Coup
A group of ambitious retired and sacked military officers and soldiers had killed President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, his wife, three sons, two daughters-in-law, one brother and eight other close relatives on August 15, 1975.
The coup leaders made Khandakar Moshtaque Ahmad, a member of Mujib’s cabinet, president and chief martial law administrator.

He was ousted in another coup three months later. General Ziaur Rahman assumed power and ratified an ordinance Moshtaque had proclaimed to exempt the confessed killers from any trial.

He and another military dictator, Gen Hussain Muhammad Ershad, rewarded the killers with various diplomatic positions in Bangladeshi missions abroad.
A case was filed on October 2, 1996, days after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s daughter Sheikh Hasina came to power. She repealed the notorious Indemnity Act and initiated the trial of the killers.

On November 8, 1998, a court handed down the death sentence to 15 former army officials.
On December 14, 2000, a two-member high court bench gave a split verdict on the trial court’s judgment. One judge upheld the death sentence of all 15 convicts while the other upheld that of 10.

The judges were also divided as to which section of the Code of Criminal Procedure should be followed for the death sentence of a convict. On April 30, 2001, a third judge resolved the matter and finally sentenced 12 killers to death.
DH News Service