13 April 2017 :
The government hanged radical Islamist leader Mufti Mohammad Abdul Hannan, for his role in kick-starting militancy on Bangladesh’s soil.
He, along with his aide Sharif Shahedul alias Bipul was hanged at the same time at Kashimpur in Gazipur at 10:01pm on April 12, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters in a briefing.
Delwar Hossain Ripon, another accomplice of Mufti, was executed at the same time in Sylhet jail, the minister informed.
The three have faced justice for killing three in a grenade attack on the then British high commissioner Anwar Choudhury in Sylhet in 2004.
Two policemen had died in the attack coordinated by Mufti Hannn, and the British envoy was injured along with nearly 40 employees of the Sylhet district administration.
The Supreme Court on March 19 this year upheld the death penalties for the Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami leaders and later rejected their pleas to review the decision, saying they cannot be acquitted for pre-mediated crimes.
The convicted militants were hanged just two days ahead of Bengali’s biggest festival Pahela Baishakh.
Mufti Hannan was also convicted and hanged to death for killing 10 people and injuring scores in a bomb attack on Chhayanaut’s programme at Ramna Batamul on the Bangla New Year in 2001.
The attack on artists from Jessore’s Udich Shilpigoshthi in the Batamul area, orchestrated by Huji at the beginning of the millennium, is remembered as the first ever militant move in Bangladesh.
HuJI leader Mufti Hannan embraced militancy while studying in a madrasa in Pakistan. He had also fought a war at the Afghanistan border.
He was arrested in Dhaka on October 1, 2005.