A Bangladesh court sentenced three members of an outlawed Islamic group to death today for a deadly bomb attack on a former British envoy in 2004.
The court also sentenced two other militants of Muslim extremist group Harkat-ul-Jihad to life imprisonment for the attempt to kill Anwar Choudhury, then British High Commissioner to Bangladesh, a court registrar said.
At least three people were killed and 50 others, including Mr Choudhury, wounded when a grenade was hurled at him in 2004, at a Muslim shrine in Sylhet, about 300 km (187 miles) northeast of capital Dhaka.
Mr Choudhury was making a visit to his ancestral village.
Among the militants sentenced to death by hanging was Mufti Hannan, operations commander of Harkat-ul-Jihad, Bangladesh. Mufti is also being prosecuted for attempting to kill former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Mufti and other militants were arrested in 2006, the year after the country was rocked by a wave of bombings blamed on several Islamic groups seeking to turn the country into a sharia-based Islamic state.
Heads of the outlawed groups, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Jagrata Muslim Janata, were executed last year following their conviction for the 2005 bombings.
Reuters
