B'desh Prez rejects mercy plea of 2 oppn leaders on death row

Bangladesh President tonight rejected the mercy petitions of two top opposition leaders paving the way for their execution for 1971 war crimes, hours after they had sought presidential clemency in a last-ditch attempt to escape the gallows.
"The President (Abdul Hamid) has rejected their mercy petitions, declining to exercise his constitutional prerogative to grant them pardons hours after the law secretary brought their prayers to him," an official told PTI.
Fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami Secretary-General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, 67, and BNP leader Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, 66, have been sentenced to death for war crimes committed during 1971 independence war against Pakistan.

They had sought presidential clemency admitting their guilt.
The Law and Home Secretaries carried the petitions to the presidential palace and they stayed for nearly an hour at his chamber and then went out as the President rejected the petitions, the official said.
According to jail sources, the prison authorities have called close relatives of Chowdhury and Mujaheed to see them for the last time.

"Senior officials including magistrates, doctors and senior prison officials who are required to witness the executions under law have also arrived to witness the process," a prison official said.
Earlier reports said that a seven-member hangmen's team comprising prison inmates was constituted to execute the convicts.

Security have been intensified around the high security prison where condemned prisoners are being held.
Paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), armed police and jail guards erected a several-tier security system stopping vehicular movements in thoroughfares around the prison complex.
Mujaheed, the second most senior member of Jamaat, was found to be a key mastermind of the massacre of the country's top intelligentsia just ahead of the December 16, 1971 independence war victory.