Bangladeshi police search spectators at the Bangabandhu National Stadium where the Asia Group B FIFA World Cup 2018 qualifying football match was due to take place between Bangladesh and Australia in Dhaka yesterday.

Agencies
Dhaka
The Bangladesh Supreme Court will deliver a verdict today on the final review petitions filed by the two opposition leaders sentenced to death for war crimes committed during 1971 independence war, as authorities tightened security across the nation.
The four-member bench, led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, will decide the fate of Jamaat-e-Islami secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury.
“The hearing on Mujahid’s petition is completed and the chief justice set the date for the verdict tomorrow and reset date for hearing Chowdhury’s petition on Wednesday as well,” attorney general Mahbubey Alam told reporters.
Mujahid’s chief counsel Khondker Mahbub Hossain said they submitted their arguments and the “highest court listened to us as well as the attorney
general with patience”.
Another attorney, who aided Alam, said the bench set the date for Mujahid’s verdict and reset the schedule of Chowdhury’s plea as the court hours today exhausted with the submission of arguments of the defence and the state side.
Elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) troops were deployed around the court complex yesterday and people were allowed entry only after security scans.
Officials said police and RAB installed makeshift check-posts in thoroughfares of every major city and randomly searched vehicles while hundreds of plainclothesmen kept a vigil against possible sabotage attempts ahead of the ruling.
Both Mujahid and Chowdhury are in their late 60s and were senior ministers in former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s BNP-led coalition government with Jamaat being its key partner.
Mujahid was found to be a key mastermind of the massacre of the country’s top intelligentsia just ahead of the December 16, 1971 victory. Chowdhury carried out atrocities particularly at his home district of southeastern Chittagong, leading a violent campaign against the Hindus.
Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal handed down death sentences to them in separate cases of crimes against humanity and the apex court upheld their capital punishment in June and July respectively.