By Mark Dummett
BBC News, Dhaka
**At least 12,000 extra policemen have been deployed in Bangladesh ahead of a verdict in the trial of army officers accused of killing the first president.**Authorities say they are concerned that supporters of the five army men on trial may try to disrupt proceedings.
The trial began 10 years ago and the last stage has seen the final appeal of the alleged killers.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed in 1975, just four years after leading Bangladesh to freedom from Pakistan.
Five of the accused are in prison in the capital, Dhaka. Six others are on the run abroad.
“If their appeal is rejected, then they will be hanged”
The killers were a group of young army officers, who went on to murder not just the charismatic president, but also his wife, three sons, two daughters-in-law and about 20 other relatives and aides.
Mr Rahman’s daughter Sheikh Hasina, who was re-elected prime minister in December, escaped the massacre only because she was out of the country at the time.
Warning
The thousands of extra policemen are guarding strategic buildings ahead of Thursday’s final verdict in the trial, one of the country’s longest-running and most controversial.
Extra men have been posted outside the Supreme Court building in the capital, Dhaka, where the verdict will be announced, as well as outside foreign embassies, at the state television and radio stations and other key buildings across Bangladesh.
The government has already blamed supporters of the men on trial for a grenade attack on one of the prosecution lawyers last month, which left several people injured.
The police arrested a group of their relatives, and the army said it was investigating possible links to serving officers. Nobody has been charged yet for the attack, and those arrested say they had nothing to do with it.
The five former soldiers do not deny their role in the death of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, but they say they should be tried in a military rather than a civilian court.
If their appeal is rejected, then they will be hanged.
Six fellow plotters, on the run abroad, have also been sentenced to death.
The government the majors helped install passed a law indemnifying their actions and until 1998 they were free men.
But by then Sheikh Hasina had herself become prime minister and the accused were put on trial, found guilty and sentenced to death.
She lost the following elections, and the next government, led by the party which ultimately benefitted from the coup, slowed the process down.
But Sheikh Hasina returned to power earlier this year, and has made the conclusion of the trial one of her top priorities.