A Bangladeshi High Court has sentenced 20 students of the country's top engineering university to death and five others to life imprisonment for the brutal murder of a fellow student, upholding a lower court's verdict.
The bench of Justice AKM Asaduzzaman and Justice Syed Enayet Hossain delivered the verdict, dismissing the appeals filed by the convicts on Sunday.
On October 7, 2019, the student wing of ousted PM Sheikh Hasina's then ruling Awami League party, the now banned Bangladesh Students' League (BSL), brutally tortured to death Abrar Fahad, a second-year student of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), inside the university dormitory.
Attackers tagged Abrar as a member of opposition Islami Chhatra Shibir and beat him to death for his articles he wrote on the social media handle Facebook against Indian water aggression on Bangladeshi rivers.
Amid nationwide outcry, a court in Dhaka, in late 2021, sentenced 20 fellow BUET students, mostly members of BSL, to death for the murder and five others to life imprisonment.
Attorney General Md Asaduzzaman told reporters that the court upheld the lower court order as the allegations against the convicts were proven.
TRT Global - The UN acknowledged the possibility of ICC prosecution but stated that it depends on Bangladesh and other stakeholders.
Icon of protest
Abrar Faiyaj, Abrar's younger brother and also a BUET student, and his father demanded implementation of the verdict.
They, however, expressed dissatisfaction as one of the convicts in the case fled jail during last August's uprising.
Lawyer Azizur Rahman Dulu, who argued for the convicts, however, told reporters that they will file an appeal before the Supreme Court against the high court order soon.
Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her party, which was known for friendly relations with India, resigned last August in the face of a massive student uprising.
Abrar has become an icon of protest during the July uprising in Bangladesh, and his portraits were displayed across Dhaka and elsewhere.
The transitional government, which took office after Hasina fled to India, this year awarded Abrar with the highest state honor, the Independence Award.
In an online address, the former ousted PM called on her supporters to stand against the interim government in Bangladesh, which sparked protests throughout the country.
