Twenty-three years after a murder which has haunted a nation, a Bangladeshi judge yesterday sentenced 15 former army officers to public execution by firing squad for murdering the country's founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and most of his family.
"They deserve no mercy," said Judge Kazi Golam Rasul, reading out his 171-page judgment to a crowded court in old Dhaka. "They have not only shot and killed the then president Bangabandhu (friend of Bengalis) Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family but have shown arrogance after the killings. They should be executed publicly."
However, only two of the condemned, including the retired colonel who led the plot, Faruk Rahman, are in custody.
The rest are in hiding overseas, a result of their being rewarded for their deeds by diplomatic postings. Four others, including a former junior information minister, were acquitted, for lack of evidence.
As the 90-minute verdict was read out, thousands of Sheikh Mujibur's followers danced in the streets, shouting "Justice has prevailed".
For the slain leader's daughter, and Bangladesh's Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, though, it was a moment of contemplation.
Retreating to the three-storey grey house on a leafy Dhaka avenue that was her childhood home, and the scene of the murder of her entire extended family barring one sister, Sheikh Hasina wept. "I am grateful to Allah and my people that the killers have been finally sentenced and that the nation will be cleansed of a terrible sin when the sentence is carried out," she told state television.
Yesterday's verdict was not unexpected; the coup leaders had repeatedly appeared on state television to boast of having saved Bangladesh from tyranny. Months before his death, Sheikh Mujibur had imposed one-party rule, and his critics accused him of corruption. However, Sheikh Hasina has always insisted her father would have returned to democracy, and since coming to power two years ago, she has made it her mission to punish his killers, and excavate a terrible past that had been all but expunged from school books and official histories.
In its 27 years of history Bangladesh has witnessed the assassination of two heads of government, three military coups, and 19 coup attempts. Fearing yesterday's verdict would spark more violence the authorities had deployed more than 10,000 security forces.