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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.

Bangladesh Islamist Abdul Kader Mullah hanged for war crimes

Abdul Kader Mullah
Abdul Kader Mullah
Bangladesh has executed the Islamist leader Abdul Kader Mullah, convicted of atrocities in the 1971 war of independence with Pakistan.

He is the first person convicted by Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) to be executed.

The ICT was set up in 2010 to investigate abuses committed during the 1971 conflict, in which some estimate three million people were killed.

Mullah was a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party.

His trial earlier in the year sparked protests from Jamaat supporters.

Several other leading figures in the party have also been convicted by the tribunal.

Mullah had been scheduled to be hanged on Tuesday, before gaining a reprieve pending a last-minute appeal against his death sentence.

The Bangladeshi Supreme Court dismissed the appeal earlier on Thursday.

The 65-year-old was hanged inside Dhaka central jail at 22:01 local time (16:01 GMT) on Thursday evening.

The BBC's Mahfuz Sadique in Dhaka says security has been tightened in the capital and around the country, and there are reports from various towns of sporadic clashes between Jamaat-e-Islami supporters and security forces.

Those being tried by the ICT are accused of collaborating with Pakistani forces who attempted to stop East Pakistan, as Bangladesh was then, from becoming an independent country.

However, human rights groups have claimed that the tribunal falls short of international standards.

Source: BBC, December 12, 2013

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