Nearly 45 years after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s brutal assassination, the man known as the founder of the nation, Bangladesh executed one of his killers, Abdul Majed.
Abdul Majed, a former military captain, publicly declared his involvement after the assassination, and had reportedly been hiding in India for many years-it is not clear when or how he returned to Bangladesh. Majed was hanged at the central jail at Keraniganj, Dhaka, a minute after midnight on Saturday, stated Inspector General of Prisons Brigade General AKM Mustafa Kamal Pasha.
The execution took place after President M Abdul Hamid rejected a clemency plea filed by Majed. Majed’s wife and other family members visited him for the last time on Saturday.
Majed is one of a dozen defendants whose death sentences were upheld by the country’s Supreme Court in 2009. In 1998, a trial court sentenced the defendants to death for their involvement in the August 15, 1975, killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members by a group of army officials.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan stated Majed’s arrest this past Tuesday was “the biggest gift” for Bangladesh this year.
The assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
Rehman was the father of the Bangladesh’s current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was the only survivor along with her sister Sheikh Rehana after the assassination. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, former army chief and husband of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, was killed in a military coup in 1981.
After the assassination, subsequent governments and President Ziaur Rahman awarded the killers, posting them mostly in Bangladesh’s diplomatic missions abroad. In 1980, Majed was posted as Bangladesh’s ambassador to Senegal in 1980.
In 2010, five defendants who admitted to taking part in the assassination were hanged. One man died in Zimbabwe of natural causes. The other six convicts, including Majed, were at large. Bangladesh says at least one of them is residing in Canada and one in the United States.
