A Bangladeshi court sentenced 10 Islamic militants to death on Thursday after finding them guilty of assisting a deadly suicide bombing on a lawyers' office in 2005, a prosecutor said. The militants, from the outlawed Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), showed no remorse after a judge read out the verdict and sentence in a crowded court room in the capital, special public prosecutor Rafiqul Islam said. "They assisted the suicide bomber in making the bomb, providing information, planning and carrying out the attack," Islam told AFP.
The attack on an office of a lawyers association in November 2005 killed eight people - four lawyers and four litigants - plus the bomber, and injured at least 100 others, the prosecutor said. The attack was one of a series of blasts the JMB carried out in 2005, raising fears that the moderate Muslim-majority nation of 153 million people would descend into an Afghanistan-style Islamic militancy.
The bomber dressed in a traditional lawyer's gown, allowing him to enter the office in Gazipur just north of Dhaka without creating suspicion, before detonating his explosives, the prosecutor said. Judge Motaher Hossain ordered the sentence of the 10 militants be carried out by hanging. Thursday's judgement follows a trial in one of Bangladesh's special fast-track courts during which 85 people testified against the militants. "They (the militants) did not react to the judgement as they don't recognise the court, saying it's 'man-made'," the prosecutor said.