An Indian accountant and the only person sentenced to death for his role in the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people — the nation’s worst terrorist attack — was hanged yesterday on his birthday, after the president rejected a last-minute mercy plea amid a debate over the capital punishment.
Yakub Memon, 53, was executed inside a prison in western India where he had been incarcerated since 1994.
His lawyers mounted a last-ditch effort to save him, including arguments at the Indian Supreme Court just two hours before the sentence was carried out.
Photo: Reuters
Prominent citizens, including retired Supreme Court judges, had urged Indian President Pranab Mukerjee to commute Memon’s sentence to life in prison. That appeal reflected both opposition to the death penalty, as well as fresh claims by his lawyers that he freely surrendered to Indian authorities in Kathmandu, Nepal, and that his direct links to the bombings had not been sufficiently established.
Indian investigators, along with the main public prosecutor in the case, Ujjwal Nikam, say he was arrested in New Delhi.
“I have exhausted my remedies,” lawyer Anand Grover told reporters after the Supreme Court heard Memon’s final plea. “I only hope that Yakub Memon will have a dignified death.”
“There’s no question of victory. I’ve just done my job,” Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi said.
Memon was convicted in 2007 of helping raise funds for the blasts that struck the Bombay Stock Exchange, Air India offices, a state transport office, three hotels, a gas station and a movie theater over two hours on March 12, 1993.
The attacks were seen as revenge for the demolition of a medieval mosque in northern India by Hindu nationalists. The demolition sparked riots in many parts of the country, leaving more than 800 people dead, most of them Muslims.
Yakub’s older brother, Ibrahim — also known as “Tiger” Memon — and Dawood Ibrahim, both leading gangsters in Mumbai in the 1990s, are the main suspects in the bombings and have fled the country. A total of 100 people have been convicted. Ten of them had also received the death penalty, but it was commuted to life in prison.
One of India’s lengthiest trials, which included 686 witness testimonies that filled 13,000 pages, opened on June 6, 1995, and ended in January 2003. The judgements began in late 2006.
As Mumbai woke up to the news of the hanging, scores of police gathered near the Memon family home and cordoned off the area. Police were also stationed at the various places in the city where the bombs had exploded.
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have decried the hanging.
Memon’s body was handed over to his family and flown to Mumbai from Nagpur hours after his execution. His burial is expected later yesterday, and hundreds of police and paramilitary soldiers were positioned near the Muslim cemetery where it was to take place.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion