Leader of banned group charged
DHAKA:
A Bangladeshi court on Tuesday indicted the leader of a banned group and 13 key lieutenants for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a July 2000 plot, police said.
Mufti Abdul Hannan and 13 members of his banned Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) were charged with planting a large explosive device with the intention of killing the prime minister, police sub-inspector Nupur Rani Dutta said.
“Mufti Hannan and his associates planted a bomb weighing 76 kilogrammes at a college campus where Hasina was scheduled to give a speech,” Dutta said.
Nine of the accused, including Hannan, were present in the heavily fortified court in the southern Bangladeshi town of Gopalganj when the judge read out the charges, Dutta said.
Five more HuJI lieutenants have been charged in absentia.
The trial will begin on August 8 with all of the accused facing the death penalty if found guilty of attempted murder and sedition charges, she added.
Hannan has already been sentenced to death in 2008, along with two of his key lieutenants, for a 2004 bomb attack on the British High Commissioner at a shrine in the north eastern city of Sylhet. He is appealing against the sentence.
He has also been charged with a 2004 grenade attack on a Dhaka rally when Hasina was the leader of the opposition. Hasina survived the deadly attack, which killed at least 20 of her party officials.
HuJI was banned in Bangladesh in 2005 for a series of attacks on sufi shrines, foreign ambassadors and popular concerts. Police say the group has been significantly weakened following a series of high profile arrests.
Hannan, a veteran of the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, was arrested in 2007 following a nationwide crackdown on militants. He has been in custody since his arrest.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 2nd, 2010.
A Bangladeshi court on Tuesday indicted the leader of a banned group and 13 key lieutenants for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a July 2000 plot, police said.
Mufti Abdul Hannan and 13 members of his banned Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) were charged with planting a large explosive device with the intention of killing the prime minister, police sub-inspector Nupur Rani Dutta said.
“Mufti Hannan and his associates planted a bomb weighing 76 kilogrammes at a college campus where Hasina was scheduled to give a speech,” Dutta said.
Nine of the accused, including Hannan, were present in the heavily fortified court in the southern Bangladeshi town of Gopalganj when the judge read out the charges, Dutta said.
Five more HuJI lieutenants have been charged in absentia.
The trial will begin on August 8 with all of the accused facing the death penalty if found guilty of attempted murder and sedition charges, she added.
Hannan has already been sentenced to death in 2008, along with two of his key lieutenants, for a 2004 bomb attack on the British High Commissioner at a shrine in the north eastern city of Sylhet. He is appealing against the sentence.
He has also been charged with a 2004 grenade attack on a Dhaka rally when Hasina was the leader of the opposition. Hasina survived the deadly attack, which killed at least 20 of her party officials.
HuJI was banned in Bangladesh in 2005 for a series of attacks on sufi shrines, foreign ambassadors and popular concerts. Police say the group has been significantly weakened following a series of high profile arrests.
Hannan, a veteran of the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, was arrested in 2007 following a nationwide crackdown on militants. He has been in custody since his arrest.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 2nd, 2010.