Five top militants sentenced to be hanged for a spate of bomb attacks which killed dozens of people in Bangladesh will appeal to President Iajuddin Ahmed for mercy, police said on Sunday. They said mercy petitions, handed to prison authorities by the five including Shayek Abdur Rahman and Siddikul Islam Bangla Bhai would be sent to the president shortly as the hangings were expected to be carried out by the middle of February.
They were sentenced for killing two judges in the southern town of Jhalakati in November 2005, police said. Shayek and Bangla Bhai, head of outlawed groups Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, respectively, were also blamed for masterminding and participating in a series of bomb blasts in August 2005, in their pursuit of introducing Sharia law in Bangladesh, a mainly Muslim democracy. The militants now can only be saved by the president, legal officials said.
DHAKA: Bangladesh's Supreme Court has ordered a stay of execution for four Islamist militants sentenced to death for bomb attacks that killed at least 30 people last year, a court official said on Sunday. The militants included 
A Bangladesh court on Wednesday acquitted all 23 accused in a bomb attack that killed 10 people in the countrys southwest seven years ago and ordered the case be re-investigated, court officials said. The bomb went off during an open-air music concert in the town of Jessore, 300 kilometres from Dhaka, on March 6, 1999. The accused have been acquitted as police failed to produce any clear evidence against them, a court official quoted judge M Abul Hossen Bepari as saying. 
DHAKA - A Bangladesh court on Monday sentenced seven top Islamist militants to death for killing two judges in a bomb attack in southern Jhalakati town in November last year. They will be hanged until death, Judge Reza Tarik Ahmed said in his verdict.
Bangladesh's second top Islamist militant was captured on Monday after a gunbattle with security forces in a northern district, police said. They said Siddikul Islam Bangla Bhai, chief of the outlawed Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh group, was arrested along with his wife at his hideout with two of his associates in the district of Mymensingh. His capture comes four days after another top fugitive Islamist, 
SYLHET, Bangladesh - Bangladeshi security forces laid siege overnight to a house in a northeastern town, where the leader of a militant Islamist group was believed to be hiding up, officials and witnesses said on Wednesday.
JMB Chief held in India? - UPDATE from Reuters 
The fugitive supremo of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, Shaikh Abdur Rahman, was reportedly arrested by the Indian Police in West Bengal on Sunday, said home ministry sources in Dhaka early this morning. The West Bengal police nabbed the Mujahideen leader, an extremist, from a hideout at Barasat, 24 Parganas of West Bengal, a neighboring Indian state, a source close to the state minister for home affairs, Lutfuzzaman Babar, told New Age.
According to the source, the West Bengal police arrested the member of the outfit, Mohsin, from 24 Parganas on Saturday. Following extensive interrogation, the Indian police came to know from Mohsin that Shaikh Rahman was also hiding in the area. Subsequently the police raided the area and nabbed Rahman the next day. Shaikh was sent to the Indian capital, new Delhi, immediately after his arrest, the source said. The state minister for home affairs told New Age at 12:30 a.m this morning that he had first come to know of the arrest from the midnight media reports. 
Security forces backed by army helicopters launched a massive hunt in areas along Bangladeshâs western border on Thursday after an intelligence tip off that top fugitive Islamist militants were hiding there, officials said. Some 1,000 police, troops and members of the elite Rapid Action battalion searched several villages near the town of Kushtia, some 300 kilometres from the capital Dhaka, while four helicopters patrolled the sky, police and witnesses said. âForces have been conducting block raids in a wide region of Kushtia but have yet to catch the militants,â one police officer said. 
A Bangladesh court has sentenced a member of an outlawed Islamist group to 15 years in prison for involvement in serial bomb attacks across the country in August, a police officer said on Monday. Two people were killed and almost 100 wounded when 500 bombs went off on August 17, blamed on Islamist militant groups fighting to turn Bangladesh, a mainly Muslim democracy, into an Islamic sharia state.