No bar to executing Bangabandhu killer Abdul Majed: Home minister

President Abdul Hamid has turned town the mercy petition of Capt (retd) Abdul Majed, one of the convicted killers of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, clearing the way for his execution.

“I’ve heard that President Abdul Hamid has dismissed the mercy pleas of Majed but I’m yet to receive the copy,” home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said on Thursday.

The President rejected the Bangabandhu killer’s mercy petition on Wednesday night.

Earlier, judge of Dhaka’s District and Session’s Court M Helal Chowdhury issued a death warrant for Majed as he was produced before his court from jail.

The court also showed him arrested in the Bangabandhu murder case.

Sources at Dhaka Central Jail said the death warrant reached the jail around 5:00pm on Wednesday and it was read out to Majed.

Majed was arrested from the city’s Mirpur area early Tuesday. A team of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit arrested him around 3:30am.

He was produced before the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate AM Zulfiqar Hayat, which sent him to jail on that day.

On August 15, 1975, Bangladesh’s founding father Bangabandhu and most of his family members, numbering 18, were assassinated by a cabal of military men.

Military Secretary Brigadier General Jamil was also killed. Several members of a family in the capital’s Mohammadpur area were killed by artillery shells fired by the killers on the same day.

During the assassination of Bangabandhu on August 15, 1975, Majed, Noor and Risaldar Moslehuddin along with others were present.

On November 19, 2009, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty of 12 convicted former army officials for the assassination of Bangabandhu and his family members.

Five killers of Bangabandhu – Syed Farooq Rahman, Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Bazlul Huda, AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed and Mohiuddin Ahmed – were hanged in January 2010.

Another killer Aziz Pasha met natural death in Zimbabwe in 2001.

The fugitive killers are former Lt Col Khandaker Abdur Rashid, SHBM Noor Chowdhury, Shariful Haque Dalim, Rashed Chowdhury and Risaldar Moslehuddin.

Of them, the government knew the whereabouts of Noor Chowdhury, Rashed Chowdhury and Moslehuddin while it was not sure about the other three fugitives -- Rashid, Dalim and Majed.

According to government sources, Noor Chowdhury has been living in Canada and Rashed Chowdhury in the USA.