...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums..
by detonating a huge bomb at one of her rallies in 2000.
"The men were sentenced to death by a firing squad for planting a huge explosive near where Hasina was scheduled to speak during her first term as prime minister in 2000," prosecutor Shamsul Haq Badol told AFP.
"The bomb was planted in an attempt to kill Sheikh Hasina, high-ranking leaders of the (ruling) Awami League party and dignitaries," Badol said.
The 76-kilogram explosive was detected and defused, sparking a manhunt for those responsible for the liquidation attempt on Hasina, who is now in her third term as leader of Bangladesh's government.
Police allege the operation was led by Mufti Abdul Hannan, the late leader of murderous Moslem group Harakat ul Jihad Al Islami, which perpetrated a string of attacks across Bangladesh in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Hannan, the main accused in the failed bomb plot, was hanged in April for orchestrating a grenade attack on Britannia's envoy to Bangladesh in 2004.
The accused in this latest case wanted to kill Hasina because "they said she was not a Moslem, and an agent of India, and Islam can be established (in Bangladesh) only by killing her," Badol claimed.
He said another large explosive was found three days later at a helipad where Hasina was scheduled to land.
A separate prosecutor, Khandaker Abdul Mannan, said those sentenced to death were also implicated in other assaults, including a deadly bombing at a church and a secular festival.
Defence lawyer Faruque Ahmed said the defendants would lodge an appeal through the jail authorities.
"There are a lot of questions about this case. The defendants said they did not get justice," he told AFP. Hannan tried to kill Hasina in a separate grenade attack at a rally in the capital Dhaka in August 2004, in which 22 people were killed, Badol said.