HuJI leader Mufti Hannan to walk to the gallows for 2004 grenade attack on UK envoy

Harkat-ul-Jihad (HuJI) leader Mufti Hannan has lost the legal battle to save himself from the charges of an attempt on life of the former UK envoy to Bangladesh.

On Sunday, an Appellate Division bench led by the chief justice scrapped petitions by the militant leader and two others for a review of the verdict.

The order means that Mufti Hannan and the two other HuJI activists, Sharif Shahedul Alam alias Bipul and Delwar Hossain alias Ripon, can now be executed.

With the review pleas being rejected by the top court, they are left with the only option of seeking presidential clemency by admitting guilt.

If they do not go for it or the president rejects their plea, the government will go ahead with the executions.

In May 2004, then British High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury came under a grenade attack while coming out of the Hazrat Shahjalal’s shrine in his hometown Sylhet.

Police's Assistant Sub-inspector Kamal Uddin died instantly. Constable Rubel Ahmed and one Habil Miah succumbed to their injuries in a hospital later.

The envoy was injured along with nearly 40 employees of the Sylhet district administration.

Mufti Hannan was arrested in September 2005 from Dhaka's Badda.

In December 2008, a Sylhet court ordered death sentences for the three.

It also ordered life in prison for two others, Mohibullah alias Mofizur Rahman and Mufti Moin Uddin alias Abu Zandal. They had not appealed against the decision.

All of five of the convicts are in jail now.

Mufti Hannan and the two other death-row convicts moved the High Court, but failed to get a verdict in their favour.

They challenged the decision with the Appellate Division, which on Dec 7 last year upheld the sentence.

Mufti Hannan

Mufti Hannan is said to be the mastermind of 13 terrorist attacks, including an attempt on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's life, perpetrated by the banned militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad (HuJI).

Educated at a madrasa, Mufti Hannan hails from Gopalganj's Kotaliparha.

He faces trial for planting a bomb made with 76 kg of explosives near the venue of a public rally addressed by Sheikh Hasina at Kotaliparha in 2000.

Mufti Hannan has been sentenced to death for the 2001 bombings at Dhaka's Ramna Park on the Bengali New Year.

On Mar 6 this year, a prison van carrying him from court to Gazipur's Kashimpur prison came under a bomb attack, in what the police say was an attempt to snatch him.