A former Bangladeshi minister was Thursday jailed for 31 years for aiding Islamic militants who were hanged for murdering two judges in a nationwide terror campaign to impose Sharia, police said.Aminul Huq, telecommunications minister in the emergency-ruled countryÂ’s most recent elected government, was convicted and sentenced by a court in the northwestern town of Rajshahi, said court police inspector Khondoker Golam Mortuza. Bangladesh executed six Islamic militant leaders convicted of the murder of the two judges in March. The militants were also accused of masterminding a country-wide wave of bomb attacks that shook the nation.
The attacks included 400 almost simultaneous blasts in almost every main town on August 17, 2005. The attacks were part of a campaign aimed at forcing Bangladesh to replace its Muslim but secular legal system, which dates from the British colonial period, with traditional Islamic law. At least 28 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the attacks, and an ensuing crackdown saw some 1,000 members of the Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh group arrested. The blasts forced the then prime minister Khaleda Zia, of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, to admit that the government had underestimated the threat from Islamists. The Islamist-allied government had earlier denied claims that senior members of the government had turned a blind eye to the activities of the extremists for political gain.