1976: Lt. Col. Abu Taher
4 comments July 21st, 2009 Headsman
At 4 a.m. this date in Dhaka Central Prison, Lt. Col. Abu Taher was hanged for treason.
A series of coups in the mirrored-sunglasses era of military governance shook the young state of Bangladesh:
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The autocratic Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was toppled by a revolt of junior officers on August 15, 1975;
Senior brass in turn felled the ruling junta on November 3, 1975, jailing powerful officer Ziaur Rahman;
A quick counter-coup of junior officers — also remembered as the “sepoy mutiny”* — mounted by leftist war hero Abu Taher on November 7 put Ziaur Rahman’s hand back on the helm of state.
While November 7 is still marked in Bangladesh as National Revolution and Solidarity Day, its author got short shrift from its beneficiary.**
Abu Taher, a retired officer and a hero of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War that had detached the former East Pakistan from Islamabad, had visions of social revolution. But three coups in as many months is the sort of thing to rattle the new big man, and Zia consolidated his own power by eliminating threats to both left and right political flanks.
A mere 17 days after doing that National Revolution and Solidarity thing, the guy with the mass movement (pdf) of armed men was arrested for treason. He faced a military tribunal the following year.
Taher scorned the charges against him, but of course the fix was in.
* An allusion to colonial history.
** However, Taher’s own date of martyrdom is also still marked by his posthumous partisans.
On this day..
- 1721: Walter Kennedy - 2020
- 1775: Not Richard Carpenter, strong swimmer - 2019
- 1661: Antonius Hambroek, defying Koxinga - 2018
- 1972: Misao Katagiri - 2017
- 1834: Catherine Snow, the last hanged in Newfoundland - 2016
- 1797: David McLane, an American traitor in Quebec - 2015
- 1683: Lord Russell, Whig martyr - 2014
- 356 BCE: Herostratus burns the Temple of Artemis - 2013
- 1798: Anthony Perry and Mogue Kearns, Protestant and Catholic - 2012
- 1915: Private Herbert Burden, memorial model - 2011
- 1986: Vice-President Paulo Correia and five others - 2010
- 1944: Col. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, for the plot to kill Hitler - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Activists,Bangladesh,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Famous,Hanged,History,Martyrs,Power,Revolutionaries,Soldiers,Treason,Wrongful Executions
Tags: 1970s, 1976, abu taher, bangladesh liberation war, communism, communists, coup d'etat, dhaka, dhaka central jail, general zia, holidays, july 21, sepoy mutiny, ziaur rahman
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