A man involved in the killing of Bangladesh independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has been executed nearly 45 years after the assassination, a prison official says.
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Abdul Majed, a former military captain, was hanged at the central jail at Keraniganj near the capital, Dhaka, just one minute past midnight on Saturday, Brigadier General AKM Mustafa Kamal Pasha said.
He was arrested in Dhaka on Tuesday, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said, adding that the arrest was "the biggest gift" for Bangladesh this year.
Majed had publicly announced his involvement in the assassination and had reportedly been hiding in India for many years. He recently returned to Bangladesh.
The execution took place after President M Abdul Hamid rejected a clemency filed by Majed, seeking mercy.
His wife and other family members visited him for the last time on Saturday.
Majed is one of a dozen defendants whose death sentences were upheld by the country's Supreme Court in 2009.
A trial court in 1998 had sentenced them to death for their involvement in the August 15, 1975, killing of Sheikh Mujib and most of his family members by a group of army officials.
In 2010, five others who admitted to taking part in the assassination were hanged.
One man died of natural causes in Zimbabwe. The other six convicts, including Majed, were at large.
At least one of them is in Canada and another in the US, officials say.
Bangladesh became independent in 1971 through a nine-month war against what was then West Pakistan, now Pakistan, under the leadership of Mujib.
He was kept in jail in Pakistan during the war and was freed in 1972 amid a global outcry when he returned to newly born Bangladesh via London and India.
Australian Associated Press
