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Bangladesh militants to hang for attack on British envoy

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-23 20:22

SYLHET, Bangladesh -- A court in northeast Bangladesh on Tuesday sentenced three Islamic militants to death and two others to life in prison for a 2004 grenade attack that wounded a British diplomat and killed three other people, a government lawyer said.

Bangladeshi police officals collect pieces of shrapnel from the bloodstained floor of the shrine of Hazrat Shah Jalal in Sylhet, May 2004. A Bangladeshi court has sentenced to death by hanging three Islamic militants convicted of plotting to kill the British ambassador in the grenade attack four years ago. [Agencies]

Judge Shamim Mohammad Afzal sentenced Mufti Hannan and two of his associates to death for the attack at a Muslim shrine in Sylhet city, 192 kilometers (120 miles) northeast of the capital of Dhaka.

Hannan's brother and another person were given life terms, Public Prosecutor Fakhruddin Ahmed said.

Lawyers for the defendants, who were all present in court Tuesday, said they would appeal the verdict.

Hannan was leader of the banned radical group Harkatul Jihad Al-Islami.

The militant outfit wanted to establish strict Islamic rule in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation governed by secular laws. It also sought to avenge the killings of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan in the US-led campaign against terrorism.

Investigators said the attack targeted then-British High Commissioner Anwar Chowdhury.

A hand grenade was hurled at the Bangladeshi-born envoy as he left the shrine of Hazrat Shah Jalal after Friday prayers on May 21, 2004. A policeman and two bystanders were killed, and 50 others were wounded.

Hannan, a radical cleric who is believed to have trained with Islamic fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s, was arrested in October 2005.

Hannan is also accused of planning a deadly grenade attack on an opposition rally in Dhaka that killed 22 people and wounded 300 others on August 21, 2004.

Harkatul Jihad is also believed to be behind a spate of bombings at cultural events and movie theaters across Bangladesh in recent years.