 | Bangladesh Hangs 6 Islamist Militants
30 March, 2007
March 30 — The military-backed government of Bangladesh on Friday executed six Islamist militants in connection with the murder of two judges, in a case that has come to signify unusually swift justice. The men had said in court that they sought to replace the country’s secular penal code with Shariah, the legal code of Islam based on the Koran.
The six men, convicted of killing the judges in November 2005, were connected to a banned organization called Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen Bangladesh, or J.M.B. The group was also blamed for a string of coordinated bombings and suicide attacks in 2005, raising alarm about the potential for Islamist militancy in Bangladesh, a poor and densely populated country of 140 million people.
The government at the time, headed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, had come under pressure to rein in militant activity. That government’s tenure ended last October.
At the helm of the state now is an army-backed administration that took over in January after months of political violence. The country is under emergency rule. Elections have been postponed indefinitely, and the government has vowed to root out corruption and violence from electoral politics. To that end, it has arrested several high-ranking politicians from both of the leading political parties on charges of graft.
The six executions were announced by the state-run news agency on Friday morning and confirmed later by the Home Ministry. The swift punishment seems intended to demonstrate the new government’s commitment to fighting radical Islam, a message that is also likely to be directed at the country’s foreign allies, not least the United States and neighboring India.
Release link:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/world/asia/31bangla.html
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