Staff Reporter :
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Sunday said that there was no legal bar to execute the death penalty on Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) leader Mufti Hannan and his two accomplishes as the President has rejected their clemency pleas.
Mufti Hannan and his two accomplices Sharif Shahedul Alam alias Bipul and Delwar Hossain alias Ripon, who had pleaded guilty and sought pardon, have also been turned down on Saturday, he said.
“We’re taking preparations as per the Jail Code to execute the death sentence as soon as possible,” the Minister said while talking to reporters at his office in Secretariat Bhaban on Sunday.
He also mentioned that they would be executed between April 11 and April 17.
Earlier, in a last-ditch attempt, the trio on March 27 pleaded President Abdul Hamid to spare their lives. Prison authorities forwarded the petitions to the Home Ministry, which was then sent to the Law Ministry. The Law Ministry forwarded it to the President, which has sent it back to the Home Ministry.
“There’s no threat of militant attack centering the execution of the militant leader,” he said in reply to a query.
Convicts Mufti Hannan and Bipul are likely to hang at Kashimpur High Security Prison in Gazipur while Ripon at the Sylhet Central Jail, said Colonel Md Iqbal Hasan, Additional Inspector General of Prisons.
The Kashimpur High Security Jail and Sylhet Central Jail authorities have already started the preparation to hang the militant leaders.
“We have not received any order from the government. We are waiting for the executive order from the Home Ministry to hang them anytime,” he said.
But Kashimpur Prison’s Superintendent Md Mizanur Rahman said that they were yet to receive any order from the Ministry.
The primary rehearsal has taken place at Kashimpur Jail, sources at the jail said.
On March 19, the Appellate Division upheld the death sentence of Mufti Hannan, Delwar Alias Ripon and Sharif Shahedul Alam alias Bipul after hearing the review petitions filed by the three death-row convicts. It released the full text of its verdict on March 21.
The culprits were sentenced to death for the assassination attempt on Anwar Choudhury, the then British High Commissioner to Bangladesh, during his visit to the Hazrat Shahjalal’s shrine in sylhet city on May 21, 2004. The attack killed three people and severely injured Anwar.
On December 23, 2008, a Sylhet court sentenced the trio to death and two others to lifetime imprisonment for their roles in the attack. The High Court upheld the sentences in February 2016.
Mufti Hannan was also sentenced to death for the 2001 Ramna Batamul bombing, in which 10 people were killed.
In 2004, the then British High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury came under a grenade attack while coming out of Hazrat Shahjalal’s shrine in his hometown Sylhet. The envoy and 40 employees of the Sylhet district administration were injured in the attack
Educated at madrasas, top HuJI leader Mufti Hannan hails from Gopalganj and is infamous for being one of the initiators of militant activities in Bangladesh. The HuJIB militant group was formed in 1992 and claims to have carried out at least 14 attacks, killing more than 100 people in the pursuit of “establishing Shariah law in Bangladesh”.
He 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 al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJIB).
He faces trial for planting a bomb made with 76kg of explosives near the venue of a public rally addressed by Hasina at Kotaliparha in 2000.
Hannan has been sentenced to death for the 2001 bombings at Dhaka’s Ramna Park on Bangla New Year’s Day.
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 in Mymensingh.
