Twenty young men received death sentences in Bangladesh for murdering a fellow student on campus grounds after he criticized the government on social media. Five other defendants were jailed for life.
The court handed death sentences to 20 defendants, and ordered five others to spend the rest of their lives behind bars and pay a fine of 50,000 Bangladeshi takas ($583) each.
Those sentenced to death ranged from 20 to 22 years old and attended the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in the country’s capital Dhaka, when the murder happened in 2019. Three of them remain at large and were convicted in absentia, newspaper The Daily Star said.
In October 2019, Abrar Fahad, a second-year electrical engineering student, was found dead on the staircase of a dormitory. According to the prosecution, he was beaten with a cricket bat and other blunt objects for six hours by fellow students.
Bangladeshi media reported at the time that Fahad was attacked after making a Facebook post critical of the government for striking a water-sharing deal with India. The student reportedly argued that the agreement about the Feni River was against Bangladesh’s interests.
The attackers were said to have been members of the student wing of Awami League (AL), a major political party in the country. All defendants were expelled from the university for their relation to the case.
Fahad’s brutal murder sparked protests on campuses across the country. During the trial, eight of the defendants gave confessional statements, according to the media.
The court was quoted as saying that death penalties and life sentences were chosen to ensure that such murders are not repeated. “I am happy with the verdict,” Fahad’s father Barkat Ullah told reporters outside court. “Abrar’s soul will be at peace if the verdict is enforced quickly.”
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Pope Francis has called for caution in the “interpretation” of a damning report released in October that found as many as 330,000 children may have been sexually abused by clergy and lay members of the Catholic Church in France.
The pontiff said on Monday that the “historical situation” must be framed in context when conducting studies that explore incidents dating back decades. The inquiry behind the report, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE), examined allegations of sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic church in France from the 1950s to 2020.
Noting that studies “must be attentive to the interpretation” people will “make of it,” the Pope said that historical abuse must be viewed according to the standards of the time. He gave as an example that the “attitude” of the church to cases of abuse was “to cover it up,” but acknowledged that this was an “attitude that unfortunately still exists today in a large number of families.”
Abuse 100 years ago, 70 years ago, was brutality. But the way it was experienced is not the same as today.
The comments drew backlash from victims’ groups in France, with the founder of one association – La Parole Liberee (Freed Speech) – criticizing the Catholic leader’s “ignorance, stupidity and denial.”
“This will show everyone that the Pope is at the heart of the problem,” Devaux told the AFP news agency. He also expressed disbelief at the pontiff’s “distressing” lack of interest in the inquiry. Francis had on Monday revealed he had yet to read the CIASE report, but said he would discuss it with French bishops during their scheduled visit later this month.
In October, he had expressed “shame” on behalf of himself and the Catholic Church over the scale of sexual abuse revealed by the 2,500-page report. The CIASE had referred to a “veil of silence” within the church that enabled decades of abuse and ensured that victims were “not believed, not heard.” This, it said, allowed “systemic” abuse to continue unchecked for decades.
Over the last 70 years, roughly 216,000 children were found to have been abused by clergy, with the number of victims potentially growing to 330,000 when including incidents by lay representatives of the church. From a total of 115,000 priests and clergy with the church over that time, the evidence showed some 2,900 to 3,200 are being accused of abuse.
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