Five Mujib killers hanged

The five jailed killers sentenced to death for the killing of Bangladesh's founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, were executed by hanging in the early hours of Thursday at Dhaka Central Jail.

Dhaka, Jan 28 (bdnewsw24.com)--The five jailed convicts, sentenced to death for the killing of Bangladesh's founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, were executed by hanging in the early hours of Thursday at Dhaka Central Jail.

The five were Syed Faruk Rahman, Mohiuddin Ahmed, Bazlul Huda, AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed and Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan—all former army officers.

Syed Faruk Rahman and Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan were the first two to be executed minutes after midnight. Mohiuddin Ahmed and Bazlul Huda were executed about a half hour later. AKM Mohiuddin was executed a few minutes before 1.00am.

Their execution turns the page on a black chapter of brutality lingering for 34 years. President Sheikh Mujib was killed with most of his family when some junior army officers stormed his private residence on Dhanmondi Road 32 in a pre-dawn swoop on Aug. 15, 1975, ending the new-born country's first spell of democracy and setting the stage for decades of military rule.

Six other former officers convicted in their absence are still on the run and another died abroad.

The bodies were handed over to the families and being taken to their ancestral homes.

bdnews24.com correspondents say they heard slogans in Old Dhaka and Dhanmondi, Dhaka University campus, Mirpur as hundreds of people were out on the streets throughout the capital as well as on rooftops near the jail.

A Supreme Court Appellate Division bench, headed by the chief justice, dismissed the review petitions of the five on Wednesday morning.

All formalities were completed at a feverish pace since then including disposing of Faruk Rahman's petition for clemency.

Five ambulances arrived just after midnight and were parked outside the heavily guarded prison as preparations were on to execute the five convicts within hours of the president rejecting the last mercy petition late Wednesday evening.

Police and elite RAB were guarding all roads leading to the central prison in densely-populated Old Dhaka, throwing a four-layer security blanket around it.

Prisons guards, RAB, armed police and metropolitan police formed the layers near and around the Nazimuddin Road jail, according to chief correspondent Sumon Mahmud.

Police chased away a group of slogan-shouting people when they marched through an alley as senior officials started arriving.

The home secretary arrived at 11:25pm Wednesday at the jail gate, preceded by just five minutes by a police car carrying a number of coffins, putting to rest all speculations about executions of the five.

The Dhaka civil surgeon. district magistrate and additional district magistrate had entered the jail at 10:30pm.

At 11:30pm, the DMP commissioner was seen walking into the high-security prison.

FATE SEALED

Within about 10 hours of a review petition's rejection by a Supreme Court bench on Wednesday morning, the fate of the convicts was sealed.

A four-member special bench of the Appellate Division at 9.27am gave the ruling rejecting the review petitions. The hearing took all of two minutes, beginning at 9:25am, to deliberate and finally reject the petitions.

A high-level meeting of policy makers and civil servants began at noon and continued for almost three hours.

This meeting, attended by the law and home ministers, the state ministers for home and law, inspector general of prisons, the chief prosecutor of the Bangabandhu murder case, the home secretary and the acting law secretary, among others, apparently decided on the course of action, according to sources privy to what transpired in the meeting.

The law minister, Shafique Ahmed, refused to be specific, telling the press that the sentences would be executed within Jan 31, emerging from that meeting shortly after 3.00pm.

He cited the jail code that executions had to be carried out between three and four weeks of issuance of the death warrants which came on Jan 3.

Jail authorities then called relatives of the five convicts on death row to come and visit.

In a departure from regular practice, the death row convicts were allowed to remain with their families well into the evening, until about 8.00pm, according to sources in the Dhaka Central Jail as well as the family members themselves.

In the meantime, Syed Faruk Rahman wrote his mercy petition addressed to the president.

The petition, sent through the prisons authorities to the home ministry and seen by bdnews24.com correspondent Prodip Chowdhury, travelled at double-quick speed to the president through the Prime Minister's Office.

Says Prodip Choudhury: "The petition was received and despatched by the home and law ministries virtually within minutes as all relevant top civil servants were present there in the minister's office.

"It was merely a matter of signing a piece of paper and handing it to the person across the table."

A Bangabhaban source confirmed bdnews24.com that president Zillur Rahman had rejected Faruk's mercy petition at about 7.30pm.

Another death row convict, Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, did not petition the president for mercy, according to the source in Bangabhaban.

The clemency pleas of the other three jailed convicts – AKM Mohiuddin, Mohiuddin Ahmed and Bazlul Huda – had already been rejected by the president earlier this month.

The Bangabhaban source told our correspondent to wear enough warm clothes. "It's going to be cold tonight."

A highly-placed prisons source told bdnews24.com around 10pm that coffins "have been bought".

VERDICT

The Supreme Court rejected appeals of the five men in a landmark verdict on Nov 19, clearing the way for hanging of all 12 former army officers convicted of the Aug 15, 1975 assassination, seven of whom are fugitives.

A five-strong bench of the Appellate Division, headed by Justice Mohammed Tafazzal Islam, set aside the appeals against previous court sentences to hang them for the multiple murders.

Justice Islam, in his six-minute delivery, upheld the verdict of the third High Court judge made in 2001.

The verdict and the execution are seen to help excavate a past that had been all but wiped from official history.

The guiding figure of Bangladesh independence, Mujib was killed with 16 members of his family, including wife and three sons, on Aug 15, 1975.

His daughters, prime minister Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, escaped death only because they were in Europe.

The trial resumed after a long gap with the return to power of Hasina in January this year. The trial, however, had slowed down and came to a halt during the regime of her rival, Khaleda Zia, during 2001-06.

Almost all the 15 officers were direct beneficiaries of the military coup and were rewarded with plum diplomatic jobs overseas until Hasina became prime minister in 1996. The coup leaders were pampered by successive governments including the BNP and publicly boasted of 'saving the country from tyranny'.

Khaleda's husband, Ziaur Rahman, himself a war hero, sent out most officers believed to be involved in the murder conspiracy on diplomatic assignments for many years.

Sheikh Mujib had imposed one-party rule, months before his assassination, and his critics accused him of corruption. But Hasina has insisted that her father would have returned democratic rule.

The government of Khandker Mushtaq Ahmed that was installed after the bloody military coup passed an ordinance in November that year indemnifying the perpetrators and closing the door on the possibility of a trial.

The Awami League government revoked the indemnity ordinance in 1996 and cleared the way for the trial. Then, Sheikh Mujib's personal assistant Muhitul Islam filed a case on Oct 2, 1996 with Dhanmondi Police Station against 24 persons.

The Appellate Division had accepted the appeals for hearing on five points on July 23, 2007.

On Nov 8, 1998, Dhaka sessions judge Golam Rasul awarded death sentences to 15 of the 20 accused.

They are Maj (retd) Bazlul Huda, Lt Col (dismissed) Syed Faruk Rahman, Lt Col (retd) Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Lt Col (retd) Muhiuddin Ahmed, Lt Col (retd) AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed, Lt Col (retd) Khandaker Abdur Rashid, Maj (retd) Shariful Haque Dalim, Maj (retd) Ahmed Shariful Hossain, Lt Col (retd) AM Rashed Chowdhury, Lt Col (retd) S H M B Noor Chowdhury, Lt Col (retd) Md Abdul Aziz Pasha, Capt (retd) Md Kismat Hashem, Capt (retd) Nazmul Hossain Ansar, Capt (retd) Abdul Mazed, and Risaldar (retd) Moslemuddin.

Four of the convicts—Major (retd) Bazlul Huda, Lt Col (dismissed) Syed Faruk Rahman, Lt Col (retd) Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan and Lt Col (retd) Mohiuddin Ahmed—appealed to the High Court against the verdict.

The High Court on Dec 14, 2000 found 10 former army officers guilty of the murder. But the two-member high court panel was split over the guilt of five others who had also been convicted and sentenced to hang by a lower court two years ago.

One judge--Justice A B M Khairul Haque-- retained death sentences of all the 15, while the second--Justice Mohammed Ruhul Amin-- acquitted for lack of evidence five--Mohiuddin Ahmed, Ahmed Shariful Hossain, Md Kismat Hashem, Nazmul Hossain Ansar, and Moslemuddin.

A third High Court judge--Justice Mohammad Fazlul Karim--acquitted three of the 15 convicts--Md Kismat Hashem, Ahmed Shariful Hossain, and Nazmul Hossain Ansar.

Four of them appealed for reprieve the same year. Another death convict, retired Lt Col (lancer) A K M Mohiuddin, made an appeal from jail after he was deported from the United States on June 18 last year.

Of the remaining seven, one died and six are fugitives from justice in foreign lands. The still absconding Lt Col (retd) Khandaker Abdur Rashid is in Pakistan, Lt Col (retd) Shariful Haque Dalim is in Canada, Lt Col (retd) A M Rashed Chowdhury in South Africa, Lt Col (retd) S H B M Noor Chowdhury in the US, Risaldar Moslemuddin in Thailand and Capt (retd) Abdul Majed lives in Kenya.

Maj (retired) Bazlul Huda, Lt Col (dismissed) Syed Farukur Rahman, lt Col (retd) Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan and Lt Col (retd) Mohiuddin Ahmed (arty) have for long been detained in the condemned cells.

Lt Col (retd) Abdul Aziz Pasha died as a runaway in Zimbabwe years back.

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