A court in Bangladesh has sentenced 19 people to death for their role in a deadly grenade attack on a 2004 political rally in the capital Dhaka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those to hang include a former minister and deputy minister, both leaders of the BNP party which was then in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The party’s current acting head, Tarique Rehman, was convicted to life in jail in absentia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The grenade attack left 24 people dead at the Awami League rally. Its leader Sheikh Hasina is now prime minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hundreds more were injured in the 21 August 2004 blast as Sheikh Hasina was about to finish a speech in front of thousands of supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former state minister for home affairs Lutfozzaman Babar is the most prominent of those sentenced to hang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The BNP says the case was politically motivated and aimed at destroying the image of party leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tarique Rehman’s mother, the BNP leader Khaleda Zia, has been a bitter rival of Sheikh Hasina for decades. She was jailed for five years in February for corruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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A court in Bangladesh has sentenced 19 people to death for their role in a deadly grenade attack on a 2004 political rally in the capital Dhaka. Those to hang include a former minister and deputy minister, both leaders of the BNP party which was then in power. The party’s current acting head, Tarique Rehman, was convicted to life in… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-2747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post","tag-bbc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2748,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions\/2748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}