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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Two sentenced to death for murdering Bangladesh blogger

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Bangladeshi court gives death sentence to two students found guilty of killing secular writer Thaba Baba.
Bangladeshi court gives death sentence to two students found
guilty of killing secular writer Thaba Baba.
Two students have been sentenced to death for the 2013 murder of an atheist blogger in Bangladesh, the first convictions in a series of killings targeting secular writers.

Faisal bin Nayem alias Dweep and Rezwanul Azad Rana were found guilty on Thursday of murdering Ahmed Rajib Haider, a blogger and activist known by his pen name, Thaba Baba.

Haider was hacked to death by machete-wielding attackers in February 2013 near his home in Dhaka's Mirpur neighbourhood.

One of the two students, who attended one of the country's top universities, is on the run and was sentenced in absentia.

The fast-track court sentenced six other people to different prison terms, including a life sentence for 23-year-old Maksudul Hasan.

Jasimuddin Rahmani, chief of banned Islamist outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team, which claimed responsibility for Haider's killing, was sentenced to five years in prison.

Defence lawyer Mosharraf Hossain Kajal said that they would go to the higher court to challenge the verdict. He told DPA news agency that the prosecution had failed to prove the allegations against his clients.

The South Asian nation's Law and Justice Minister Anisul Huq said that the investigators had been working hard to bring perpetrators of attacks on other bloggers to justice.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog, welcomed the court ruling.

"The convictions in the murder of Ahmed Rajib Haider mark a long overdue but encouraging first step in addressing the violence directed against bloggers in Bangladesh," CPJ Asia Research Associate Sumit Galhotra said in a statement.

"If Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government is committed to protecting the country's independent voices, it must act decisively to deliver justice in the murders of other bloggers and ensure the protection of those who remain at risk."

Four more secular bloggers and a publisher have been killed this year, triggering protests and claims that the government is not doing enough to protect dissident writers and activists.

Local groups have claimed responsibility for murdering the bloggers, branding them enemies of Islam.

Source: Al Jazeera, December 31, 2015

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