BD sentences 10 to death for plot to kill Hasina

DHAKA: A Bangladesh court sentenced ten Islamist militants to death on Sunday over a failed plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by detonating a huge bomb at one of her rallies.

The men were sentenced to death by firing squad for planting a huge explosive near where Hasina was scheduled to speak during her first term as prime minister in 2000, prosecutor Shamsul Haq Badol told AFP.

“The bomb was planted in an attempt to kill Sheikh Hasina, high-ranking leaders of the ruling Awami League party and dignitaries,” Badol said. The 76 kilogram explosive was detected and defused, sparking a manhunt for those responsible for the assassination attempt on Hasina, who is in her third term as leader of Bangladesh’s secular government.

Police allege the operation was led by Mufti Abdul Hannan, the late leader of extremist group Harakat ul Jihad Al Islami, which perpetrated a string of attacks across Bangladesh in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Hannan, the main accused in the failed bomb plot, was hanged in April for orchestrating a grenade attack on Britain’s envoy to Bangladesh in 2004. The accused in this latest case wanted to kill Hasina because “they said she was not a Muslim, and an agent of India, and Islam can be established in Bangladesh only by killing her,” Badol said. —AFP