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| Image: BBC News |
Seven Islamists were sentenced to death for a 2016 attack on a cafe in the capital of Bangladesh in which 22 people, mostly foreigners, were killed.
The attack at the Holey Artisan cafe in Dhaka was conducted by a group of five men who took the diners hostage.
Eight people were on trial, accused of planning the attack and providing weapons. A man was acquitted.
The 12-hour siege was the most deadly Islamist attack in Bangladesh. Most of the victims were Italian or Japanese.
The attack was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, but Bangladesh contested this, believing instead that a local militant group was responsible. All the killers were killed by the police.
Since the attack, the Bangladesh authorities have carried out a brutal crackdown on militants whom he sees as a destabilizing force in the predominantly Muslim country.
The seven convicts were accused of belonging to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a home-grown Islamist group outlawed in the country.
By condemning men in Dhaka on Wednesday, a judge said he wanted to undermine public security and create anarchy.
Some of the men shouted "Allahu Akbar" (an Arabic phrase meaning "God is the greatest") as they were taken away from the courtroom, according to the AFP news agency.
A security cordon was put in place outside the courtroom, with hundreds of armed policemen surrounding the building.
One of the suspicious minds of the attack, Nurul Islam Marzan, was killed in a shootout with the anti-terrorist police in January 2017, the authorities said.
How did the attack happen?
On the evening of 1 July 2016, five armed men broke into the Holey Artisan cafe in the upscale Gulshan district of Dhaka.
Armed with rifles and assault machetes, the young attackers opened fire and took the diners hostage.
The attack saw victims inside the cafe, most of them foreigners, shot or killed by militants.
The army commandos were called after two policemen died trying to fight the militants.
After a 12-hour break, the commandos stormed the building and rescued 13 hostages, killing all five militants behind the attack.
The victims included nine Italians, seven Japanese, an American and an Indian. Family members and friends of the victims had gathered nearby, waiting anxiously for news.
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| Image:BBC NEWS The former location of Holey Artisan cafe, pictured here on the one year anniversary of the cafe attack |
Brig. Bangladesh General Brig. Naim Asraf Chowdhury said the victims were "brutally" attacked with sharp weapons.
"It was an extremely hateful act," Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said in a televised address at that time. "What kind of Muslims are these people? They have no religion".
A police investigation found that 21 militants in total were involved in carrying out and planning the attack, according to the Daily Star newspaper. Five were killed during the attack, eight in subsequent anti-militant operations, according to the newspaper.
How did the authorities respond?
At least 80 suspected militants were killed and more than 300 people arrested during a wave of operations following the attack.
Before that there had been a series of deadly attacks on secular writers, bloggers and members of religious minorities.
The Bangladesh government has repeatedly denied international jihadist groups, such as IS and al-Qaeda, behind these attacks, usually blaming the JMB.
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| Image : BBC News Bangladeshi authorities have led a brutal crackdown on militants since the attack |
But security forces have been subjected to intense criticism for failing to prevent violence. The Holey Artisan coffee attack - claimed by the IS - galvanized the country's security agencies into action.
However, there have been persistent concerns over the authorities' tactics.
The UN and others have accused security forces of forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and torture.
Islamist militant groups not yet uprooted
Analysis by Akbar Hossain, BBC Bengali, Dhaka
The Holey Artisan coffee attack has provoked massive anti-terrorist operations across the country. And there were enormous human rights concerns about how operations were conducted.
The government claims to have dismantled Islamist militant groups. Security forces and spy agencies in Bangladesh have purchased sophisticated equipment to keep track of militant activities on the Internet.
Security analysts recognize that the government has successfully contained militancy, but is not believed to have been completely eradicated.
A recent film released by the Islamic State group showed several young Bangladeshis who expressed their support for the new extremist leadership after US forces killed its former leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Collect From - BBC News
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