Two Bangladesh opposition leaders executed

The minister did not give any timelines for the execution, but deputy police chief of Dhaka Sheikh Maruf Hasan said the two convicted leaders, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, would be hanged later Saturday night.

Here it is also told that paramilitary border guards and other forces were deployed mainly in Dhaka to avoid any violence or rage following the incident.

The two men were executed only hours after Bangladesh president Abdul Hamid refused to grant them clemency.

Jamaat-e-Islami and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party say the trials were politically motivated.

On Saturday evening, the jail authorities asked the family members of the two death row convicts to come and meet them.

Chowdhury, a minister in military dictator H.M. Ershad’s cabinet, was hanged for the genocide of Hindus and the murders of Awami League supporters.

The issue of war crimes has always been a divisive one in the predominantly Muslim country of 160 million, since the war forged the new, secular nation of Bangladesh from what had been East Pakistan.

They had both tried to thwart Bangladesh’s struggle in its struggle for freedom but after the assassinations of Bangabandhu and the four national leaders in 1975 emerged as powerful players in politics.

Mojaheed was minister of social welfare from 2001 to 2006, and he was secretary-general of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s main Islamist party.

Bangladesh’s supreme court dismissed the two men’s final appeals on Wednesday, upholding the death sentences passed by a controversial domestic war crimes tribunal in 2013.

Jamaat calls strike for Monday.

Salauddin’s wife Farhat Quader Chowdhury did not specify if the convict would seek mercy.

“As emphasised earlier, we have also been noting the reaction of the global community on the flawed trials in Bangladesh related to events of 1971”, it said.

In a statement on Sunday the foreign office spokesman, Qazi Khalilullah reminded Bangladesh government of 1974 treaty in which India, Pakistan and Bangladesh agreed to disperse the situation by reconcile matters related to 1971 war in Bangladesh. The New York-based group said Mujahid was sentenced to death for instigating his subordinates to commit abuses, although no subordinates testified or were identified.

He was accused of responsibility for the killings of a number of pro-independence Bangladeshi leaders and intellectuals.