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Bangladesh seeks details after Saudi Arabia executes two Bangladeshis

The foreign ministry says it was not told in advance about the executions, which Saudi Arabia says followed an act it described as immoral inside a mosque in Mecca.

ScrollBeat DeskPublished: 17 Oct 2026, 22:05

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shama Obaid Islam at a meeting in Dhaka in September 2026 (file photo). Photo: Press Information Department, Government of Bangladesh. Press Information Department (PID), Government of Bangladesh

Bangladesh has formally asked Saudi Arabia for details of the execution of two Bangladeshi nationals, after the government learned of the case from Saudi media rather than through official channels, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry said the two were executed on 14 October. A court convicted them under ta'zir, a category of discretionary punishment in Islamic law, over what the ministry described as an immoral act inside a mosque in the holy city of Mecca, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency. Saudi authorities identified the two as Nazerul Islam Abdul Basir and Siti Akhtar.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shama Obaid Islam told reporters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dhaka on Saturday that Bangladesh had written to the Saudi government seeking detailed information. She said neither the ministry nor the Bangladesh mission in Saudi Arabia was told beforehand.

Shama Obaid Islam said a message from the labour welfare wing of the mission indicated the two had been accused of adultery inside a mosque in Mecca, which is treated as a grave offence under Saudi law. She said no official information had reached Bangladesh, and that she could not confirm the details until Saudi Arabia replied.

"The death sentences of two Bangladeshis in Saudi Arabia are a major lesson for us," she said, urging Bangladeshis abroad to obey the laws of the countries where they live.

The Bangladesh Consulate General in Jeddah sent a diplomatic note to the Saudi foreign ministry after learning of the executions from the news media, officials said. Both countries are parties to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which requires authorities to tell a detained foreign national that their consulate can be notified, and to inform the consulate if the detainee asks.

Saudi Arabia is the largest destination for Bangladeshi migrant workers, with more than four million there. Shama Obaid Islam said the government would discuss bringing the bodies home once it received a reply. The exact circumstances of the case, the identities of the two and whether consular access was offered remain unconfirmed.

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Iran says two oil tankers hit mines in Strait of Hormuz as waterway stays shut

The Revolutionary Guards say both tankers caught fire after striking naval mines on Saturday, one of them carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude. The US military disputes the account and says projectiles, not mines, are hitting the vessels.

ScrollBeat Desk17 Oct 2026, 23:25Open this article

Satellite view of the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, taken by NASA's Terra satellite on 2 December 2020. Representative image of the waterway. NASA / MODIS, public domain. NASA / MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center (public domain)

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday that two oil tankers caught fire after striking naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the latest in a string of attacks on shipping in the waterway at the centre of the US-Iran war.

The IRGC Navy said the second supertanker, carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude oil, suffered a massive explosion in its engine room after hitting a mine while taking what it called an unauthorised route, with its tracking and radar systems switched off. Iran's state-run Press TV shared footage it said showed the vessel on fire. The Guards did not name or flag the tankers, and there was no independent confirmation of the incident.

The claim is disputed. US Central Command says it has cleared the strait of naval mines and that vessels are being struck by projectiles rather than mines. It said a container ship that sank this week, the M/V GFS Pride, was hit by an IRGC projectile, not a mine as Iran had said.

The two sides also give sharply different accounts of traffic through the strait. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a Western maritime security body, reported at least 12 ships attacked in the week to 16 October, while warning that most crews were refusing to report incidents. US Central Command chief Brad Cooper said 400 ships and 100 million barrels of oil had moved through the strait over the past week and that the waterway is 'controlled by the United States and our regional partners, not Iran'. Tehran says Washington is exaggerating its progress.

Iran has kept the strait restricted since 28 February, when the United States and Israel began strikes on Iranian territory. Oil flows through Hormuz were about 11.6 million barrels per day in the seven days to 13 October, roughly 68 per cent of the 17.1 million-barrel pre-war baseline, according to the analysis firm Kpler, and Brent crude touched 110 dollars a barrel on Friday for the first time since May.

Diplomacy has not stopped entirely. Messages are still being relayed between Tehran and Washington by regional mediators including Pakistan and Qatar, though no breakthrough is expected soon.

NEXT STORY Culture & Society

CUET team wins international mortar competition in Atlanta

Team CUET C took first place overall at the Fall 2026 American Concrete Institute Mortar Workability Competition and also finished second for economical design. A second Bangladeshi team, from IUT, placed fourth.

ScrollBeat Desk17 Oct 2026, 23:24Open this article

The civil engineering building at Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET), whose student team won an international concrete competition in Atlanta. Representative campus photograph. Photo: কামরুল ইসলাম শাহীন, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. কামরুল ইসলাম শাহীন / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A student team from Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET) won first place overall at the Fall 2026 American Concrete Institute (ACI) Mortar Workability Competition in Atlanta, the university and the state news agency BSS said.

Team CUET C also finished second in the economical design category. The competition ran from 11 to 14 October alongside ACI's Fall convention, and 40 teams from around the world reached the final round after a selection process.

Judges gave the greatest weight to flowability, which accounted for 50 per cent of the total score, and to stability at 20 per cent. The remaining points were split among report quality (15 per cent), carbon emissions (10 per cent) and cost-effectiveness (5 per cent).

A second Bangladeshi team, from the Islamic University of Technology (IUT), placed fourth overall and took second place in the environmental design category as well as a judges' choice award in the Aesthetics in Concrete competition. Between them, the two teams representing the ACI Bangladesh Chapter won four awards.

The CUET team was advised by Dr GM Sadikul Islam, a professor in CUET's Department of Civil Engineering and faculty adviser to its ACI student chapter. The IUT team was advised by Prof Dr Tarek Uddin, president of the ACI Bangladesh Chapter.

Swarup Chandra Modak, a member of the winning team, said the competition had shown the students what they were capable of and that, with the right resources and facilities, they could demonstrate that competence anywhere in the world. Prof Sadikul Islam said CUET's ACI chapter had won six international awards since it was founded in 2018, all in online competitions, and that a first in-person win on American soil had long been a dream.