Bangladesh court upholds 2013 death sentence for 139 soldiers over mutiny

A Bangladesh court on Monday upheld death sentences for 139 soldiers over the massacre of 74 people including 57 senior army officers during a 2009 mutiny, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam said.

In 2013, a court sentenced 152 soldiers to death for the grisly killings in which dozens of officers were shot, hacked to death or burnt alive before being dumped into sewers or shallow graves. 

"The verdict has upheld the death sentence for 139 people," Alam said after the High Court handed down its judgement in Dhaka.

"Nowhere in the world did anything happen like the way those 57 top army officers were killed," he said.

The sentences will be appealed again in the Supreme Court, which by law has the final say in all capital punishment cases.

One of those handed the death penalty died in custody, eight others had sentences commuted to life imprisonment and four were acquitted, Alam said.

Some 850 people had been accused of involvement in the bloody rampage that broke out in the capital, Dhaka, and quickly spread to a dozen other towns.

The sentences were condemned at the time by the UN rights chief, who expressed alarm at such a heavy punishment meted out in a mass trial.

The mutineers stole thousands of weapons in February 2009 before going on a two-day killing spree at a barracks.

The then-chief of the roughly 48,000-strong paramilitary force was among those killed in the 33-hour rampage. Others included 57 top- and middle-ranking army officers deputed to the force, as well as several civilians.

Bangladesh has a history of military coups and the massacre threatened the newly-elected government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which responded by arresting thousands of suspects.