Five top militants sentenced to be hanged for a spate of bomb attacks which killed dozens of people in Bangladesh will appeal to President Iajuddin Ahmed for mercy, police said on Sunday. They said mercy petitions, handed to prison authorities by the five including Shayek Abdur Rahman and Siddikul Islam Bangla Bhai would be sent to the president shortly as the hangings were expected to be carried out by the middle of February.
They were sentenced for killing two judges in the southern town of Jhalakati in November 2005, police said. Shayek and Bangla Bhai, head of outlawed groups Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, respectively, were also blamed for masterminding and participating in a series of bomb blasts in August 2005, in their pursuit of introducing Sharia law in Bangladesh, a mainly Muslim democracy. The militants now can only be saved by the president, legal officials said.