Bangladesh executes two opposition leaders

Bangladesh has hanged two top opposition leaders who failed to secure a pardon from the president.

Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, sentenced to death for their roles in Bangladesh's 1971 independence war with Pakistan, were executed on Saturday night less than an hour apart.

The executions came shortly after President Abdul Hamid rejected appeals for clemency.

Sheikh Maruf Hasan, deputy police chief of the capital Dhaka, said earlier on Saturday that security was stepped up in the country to prevent unrest in response to the execution.

Bangladesh's Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed their final legal appeals, upholding the leaders' death sentences originally handed down by a controversial war crimes tribunal in 2013.

Mujahid, 67, is the second most senior member of Bangladesh's largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, while Chowdhury, 66, is an ex-legislator and a top aide to Khaleda Zia, leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

The pair are among more than a dozen leaders of the opposition alliance convicted by a tribunal set up by the secular government in 2010.

The government beefed up security in the capital to maintain order ahead of the execution [AP]

The convictions triggered the country's deadliest violence since independence, with some 500 people killed, mainly in clashes between Jamaat-e-Islami activists and police.

There are fears the executions could spark fresh unrest in the Muslim-majority nation, which is reeling from a string of killings of secular bloggers as well as the murders of two foreigners in recent months.

Jamaat called a nationwide strike on Thursday, declaring Mujahid's original trial "farcical" and "aimed at eliminating" the party's leadership.

New York-based Human Rights Watch asked Bangladesh on Friday to halt the "imminent executions" of Mujahid and Chowdhury, citing "serious fair trial concerns surrounding their convictions".