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Two opposition leaders executed in Bangladesh

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Palpable fear pervades the air in Bangladesh following the hanging of two opposition leaders who had failed to secure a pardon from the president.
For their roles in Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war with Pakistan, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, were both executed on Saturday night less than an hour apart.
The pair are among more than a dozen leaders of the opposition alliance convicted by a tribunal set up by the secular government in 2010.
Moments after President Abdul Hamid rejected appeals for clemency, the executions were carried out.
The final legal appeals of the victims were dismissed with the Bangladesh’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upholding the leaders’ death sentences originally handed down by a controversial war crimes tribunal in 2013.

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And in a move to forestall public protest after the executions, security was stepped up in the country. Sheikh Maruf Hasan, deputy police chief of the capital Dhaka, said authorities are leaving no stone unturned to prevent unrest.
Mujahid, 67, was the second most senior member of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, while Chowdhury, 66, was an ex-legislator and a top aide to Khaleda Zia, leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

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