#Asia: Bangladesh Executes Two Opposition Leaders

Bangladesh has hanged two top opposition leaders who failed to secure a pardon from the president.

Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, sentenced to death for their roles in Bangladesh's 1971 independence war with Pakistan, were executed on Saturday night less than an hour apart...

The executions came shortly after President Abdul Hamid rejected appeals for clemency.

Sheikh Maruf Hasan, deputy police chief of the capital Dhaka, said earlier on Saturday that security was stepped up in the country to prevent unrest in response to the execution.

Bangladesh's Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed their final legal appeals, upholding the leaders' death sentences originally handed down by a controversial war crimes tribunal in 2013.