While he was imprisoned, he only killed one person; when he was released, he killed dozens. Became a writer and TikTok star after hanging dozens of death row inmates Shahjahan Buya, Bangladesh’s most prolific executioner, died on Monday at the age of 70, police said.
Reducing sentences for executioners
A former guerrilla and Marxist revolutionary, Shahjahan Buya joined the Sarbahar rebels in the 1970s who tried to overthrow the government of the time, considering it to be the payer of neighboring India.
In 1979, he was sentenced to 42 years in prison for killing a truck driver during a shootout with police. During his time in prison, he noticed that some prisoners were given preferential treatment. He understands that this applies to those who execute those sentenced to death. Buya then becomes a volunteer.
For each execution, he is rewarded with a special meal of beef, chicken and aromatic rice pilaf, and his punishment is lifted for several months.
In prison he abandoned Marxism and turned to Islam.
According to him, 60 executions
During his career, Buya claims to have hanged 60 convicts, including at least three innocent people. Several years ago, he recalled his first execution, which took place in the late 1980s. The convict “calmly recited the Kalima,” a confession of the Islamic faith, “without tears,” explains Buya.
The prison authorities, for their part, set his record of 26 executions. Among them are the military who carried out the coup in 1975 that cost the life of Sheikh Mijibur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh and the father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
His services as an executioner earned him a reduced sentence, he was released last year and published an autobiography that became a bestseller in Bangladesh.
He details the hangings of convicts and the final moments of some of the most famous men. He says that the convict’s family was called to say goodbye. Then hot water, scented with herbs, was brought to wash the prisoner, white clothes and the last meal of his choice.
He also married a woman 50 years his junior and took TikTok by storm with a video he posted there.
2,400 people await execution in Bangladesh prisons by the end of 2023
Human rights activists say Bangladesh’s prison system is deeply flawed, but Buya rejects their criticism, although he believes at least three of the people he executed were innocent. In his autobiography, the executioner hesitates to delve into the debate for or against the death penalty or the shortcomings of justice in Bangladesh.
Buya, when asked about this practice, justified himself: “If I had not hung them, someone else would have done the job.”
According to Amnesty International, more than 2,400 people were awaiting execution in Bangladesh prisons at the end of 2023, five of whom were hanged. That same year, the country’s courts handed down more than 248 death sentences, the third-highest rate in the world.
He felt a sharp chest pain on Monday morning at his home in Hemayetpur, a suburb of the capital Dhaka, and died before reaching hospital, police said.
Source: Le Parisien
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