Death for 3 in Bangladesh for killing blogger

NEW DELHI: A Bangladeshi court has sentenced 3 people to death and 5 others to prison for killing an atheist blogger in 2013. Judge Sayeed Ahmed announced the decision in a Dhaka courtroom, in the presence of 7 defendants charged with murder in the death of Ahmed Rajib Haider. The blogger campaigned for the ban of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, which is opposed to Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan in 1971. One of the three who were sentenced to death was tried in absentia. The judge sentenced three others to 10 years in prison, another to five and another to three years. Haider's father rejected the verdict saying all the defendants deserved the death sentence.