A Bangladeshi court sentenced a mother and her two...

A Bangladeshi court sentenced a mother and her two sons to death for killing the elder son's wife over a dowry dispute.
Sadequl Islam, 34, stood alone in the dock as sentence was passed while his mother Rowshan Ara Jahan, 52, and younger brother Touhidul Islam, 30, were sentenced in their absence. Police were trying to track them down.
The court heard that the three strangled Sadequl Islam's young bride out of anger at her family's failure to pay the remaining 200,000 taka (3,300 dollars) of a total dowry payment of 500,000 taka (8,330 dollars).
The victim, Sabina Yasmin, 20, was murdered in September 2003, four months after she married, at her in-laws' family home in Rajshahi district around 200 kilometres (124 miles) northwest of the capital Dhaka.
Dowry payments or gifts, customarily given by brides' families to grooms, are officially banned in Bangladesh, the world's third largest Muslim-majority country.
But the tradition persists with dowry disputes frequently triggering violence against women, including acid attacks that can disfigure victims for life.