Associated Press

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- Six top Islamic militants convicted of killing two judges in a 2005 bomb attack in southern Bangladesh were hanged Friday, a television station reported.

The six members of the banned Jumatul Mujahideen Bangladesh group, which wants to introduce Islamic Sharia laws in the Muslim-majority country, had been sentenced to death for the Nov. 14, 2005, slayings in the town of Jhalakathi.

During their trial, the defendants said they targeted the courts because they are run by secular law.

The six men were hanged early Friday in four separate prisons in Bangladesh, private TV station Channel-i reported.

The executions were kept a secret until security forces delivered the militants' bodies to their families early Friday. TV footage showed the relatives signing papers to confirm receipt of the bodies.

Relatives and neighbors gathered gloomily around the wooden coffins, but there were no protests.

Shaikh Abdur Rahman, known as the supreme commander of the militants, was executed at a prison in eastern Comilla town, the TV report said.

His sister Atiqua Begum, said security forces brought his body to the family in the remote farming village of Charsigram in Jamalpur district, about 80 miles north of the capital, Dhaka.

"We are preparing for the funeral," she said, as villagers and reporters gathered in the village. "Allah will forgive him."

The body of Siddiqul Islam, a deputy of Rahman, reached his village home in northern Bogra district before dawn Friday, local reporter A. K. Azad said.

Islam's body was brought in a wooden coffin and received by his brother Rafiqul Islam, Azad told The Associated Press.

Early this month, Bangladesh's president Iajuddin Ahmed rejected appeals for clemency by the six men, paving the way for their execution.

The Supreme Court turned down the militants' appeal against the death sentence in late November.

Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, has been blamed for a string of bombings across the nation that have killed 26 people and wounded dozens more since August 2005, police said.

The wife of slain judge Jagannath Pandey hailed the executions.

"I'll never get my husband back, but I'm happy that justice has prevailed. The killers have been punished," Pallabi Pandey told reporters at her home in southern Barisal town.

"The extremists have got what was due to them," said Abul Kalam, a rickshaw driver in Dhaka.

"How could they kill the innocent judges?"