DHAKA: A court in Bangladesh upheld on Sunday death sentences of 20 former university students convicted of murdering a fellow student in 2019 who had criticized the country’s former government on social media.
Abrar Fahad, 21, a student at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), was killed hours after publishing a Facebook post that criticized the then government of Sheikh Hasina for signing a water-sharing treaty with India.
Fahad was beaten for nearly six hours with cricket bats by a group of 25 students, all members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of former prime minister’s political party, the Awami League.
The student wing was accused of creating a reign of terror on university campuses before Hasina was ousted last year following a student-led uprising.
“I am satisfied. I hope the legal procedures will be completed soon, and justice will be served,” Fahad’s father, Barkat Ullah, told reporters after the verdict was announced by the court on Sunday.
“I don’t want to blame the parents who sent their sons to the top university, but they got involved in bad politics. I would urge others to stay away from harmful activities,” he added.
Fahad’s killing sparked nationwide protests, forcing Hasina to pledge the highest punishment for the perpetrators.
Due legal process will be followed to implement the verdict, Attorney General Md Asaduzzaman told reporters.
“The High Court upheld the lower court verdict that handed down death sentences to 20 and life imprisonment to five,” Asaduzzaman said.
“The convicts will be allowed to appeal against the verdict and will have all the rights ensured by the court.”
Syed Mizanur Rahman, one of the group’s defense lawyers, said, “We will appeal against the verdict.”
Of the 20 sentenced to death, four are still on the run.
One of them, Muntasir Al Jamie, who was convicted in Faha’s murder, broke through the prison wall of a high security jail on August 6.
Death sentences are common in Bangladesh, with hundreds of people currently on death row.
All executions are carried out by hanging, a legacy of British colonial rule.
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Bangladesh court upholds death sentence of 20 students in 2019 murder case
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Bangladesh court upholds death sentence of 20 students in 2019 murder case
- Abrar Fahad, a student at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, was killed after criticizing then government of Sheikh Hasina on Facebook
- Fahad, 21, was beaten for nearly six hours with cricket bats by a group of 25 students, all members of the student wing of Hasina’s Awami League political party
Spanish police evict hundreds of migrants from squat deemed a safety hazard
BARCELONA: Police in northeastern Spain began carrying out eviction orders Wednesday to clear an abandoned school building where hundreds of mostly undocumented migrants were living in a squat north of Barcelona.
Knowing that the eviction was coming, most of the occupants had left before police in riot gear from Catalonia’s regional police entered the school’s premises early in the morning under court orders.
The squat was located in Badalona, a working class city that borders Barcelona. Many sub-Saharan migrants, mostly from Senegal and Gambia, had moved into the empty school building since it was left abandoned in 2023.
The mayor of Badalona, Xavier García Albiol, announced the evictions in a post on X. “As I had promised, the eviction of the squat of 400 illegal squatters in the B9 school in Badalona begins,” he wrote.
Lawyer Marta Llonch, who represents the squatters, said that many of them lived from selling scrap metal collected from the streets, while a few others have residency and work permits but were forced to live there because they couldn’t afford housing.
“Many people are going to sleep on the street tonight,” Llonch told The Associated Press. “Just because you evict these people it doesn’t mean they disappear. If you don’t give them an alternative place to live they will now be on the street, which will be a problem for them and the city.”
García Albiol, of the conservative Popular Party, has built his political career as Badalona’s long-standing mayor with an anti-immigration stance.
The Badalona town hall had argued that the squat was a public safety hazard. In 2020, an old factory occupied by around a hundred migrants in Badalona caught fire and four people were killed in the blaze.
Like other southern European countries, Spain has for more than a decade seen a steady influx of migrants who risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean or Atlantic in small boats.
While many developed countries have taken a hard-line position against migration, Spain’s left-wing government has said that legal migration has helped its economy grow.
Knowing that the eviction was coming, most of the occupants had left before police in riot gear from Catalonia’s regional police entered the school’s premises early in the morning under court orders.
The squat was located in Badalona, a working class city that borders Barcelona. Many sub-Saharan migrants, mostly from Senegal and Gambia, had moved into the empty school building since it was left abandoned in 2023.
The mayor of Badalona, Xavier García Albiol, announced the evictions in a post on X. “As I had promised, the eviction of the squat of 400 illegal squatters in the B9 school in Badalona begins,” he wrote.
Lawyer Marta Llonch, who represents the squatters, said that many of them lived from selling scrap metal collected from the streets, while a few others have residency and work permits but were forced to live there because they couldn’t afford housing.
“Many people are going to sleep on the street tonight,” Llonch told The Associated Press. “Just because you evict these people it doesn’t mean they disappear. If you don’t give them an alternative place to live they will now be on the street, which will be a problem for them and the city.”
García Albiol, of the conservative Popular Party, has built his political career as Badalona’s long-standing mayor with an anti-immigration stance.
The Badalona town hall had argued that the squat was a public safety hazard. In 2020, an old factory occupied by around a hundred migrants in Badalona caught fire and four people were killed in the blaze.
Like other southern European countries, Spain has for more than a decade seen a steady influx of migrants who risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean or Atlantic in small boats.
While many developed countries have taken a hard-line position against migration, Spain’s left-wing government has said that legal migration has helped its economy grow.
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