8 militants sentenced to death in Bangladesh for killing publisher

An anti-terrorism special tribunal in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka has given death penalty to eight militants including a sacked army officer over the murder of a publisher in 2015, reported Xinhua.

Judge Md Mujibur Rahman of the Anti-Terrorism Special Tribunal on Wednesday handed down the verdict in presence of six of the accused.

Two of the convicts including the sacked Bangladeshi Army Major Syed Ziaul Haque are absconding while the rest are behind bars.

The convicts have also been fined 50,000 taka (1 U.S. dollar equals about 86 taka) each.

In the ruling, the judge noted that all the convicts were members of the banned local militant outfit Ansar Al Islam.

Publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan, 43, was killed at his office in Dhaka in October 2015 for publishing books of a secular writer.

The sacked Army officer Ziaul, who masterminded and ordered the killing of Dipan, has been charged in several other cases over similar attacks in 2015 and subsequent years.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks, Bangladesh's police in the recent years have conducted series of large-scale operations against militants and hunted down terror suspects.