A Bangladeshi executioner who executed more than two dozen fellow prisoners in exchange for reduced sentences was released on Sunday, official sources said.
First modification:
Shahjahan Bhuiyan, who was imprisoned 32 years ago for murder, gained notoriety for killing 26 people while in prison, after he informed prison officials that he had rope skills.
Among those he executed were military officers convicted of plotting a 1975 coup and assassinating the country’s founding leader, father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
“His jail term was reduced because of the hangings he carried out,” Tania Zaman, deputy head of Dhaka’s central jail, told AFP, saying his executions had risen to 26 while he was incarcerated.
The 74-year-old executioner also hanged Islamist leader Ali Ahsan Mujahid and opposition figure Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury after they were accused of war crimes, according to another prison official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Also on the list is Siddique Islam, known as Bangla Bhai, an Islamist leader from the banned Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh organization, which led a campaign of bombings across the country in 2005, the official added.
Shahjahan Bhuiyan defended his actions by arguing that they helped him reduce his sentence.
“If I didn’t hang them, someone else would,” he declared. “Even though I feel sympathy for him, as a convict, I have to,” she said.
Bangladesh inherited capital punishment from its British colonial rulers, and has executed nearly 500 people since independence from Pakistan in 1971.
Bangladesh is one of the few countries that still carry out death sentences by hanging.
Like Bhuiyan, all the executioners are long-serving prisoners who have been selected and trained to do so.
