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Hasina arrested, sent to jail

Haroon Habib

Conspiracy to exclude me from polls, says Awami leader

PHOTO: AP

HASINA ARRESTED: The former Bangladesh Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, being taken to a court in Dhaka on Monday after her arrest on extortion charges. In a pre-dawn swoop on the Awami League leader's residence, security forces took the leader into custody. The court sent her to jail after rejecting her bail plea.

DHAKA: The former Bangladesh Prime Minister and president of Awami League, Sheikh Hasina, was arrested from her residence early on Monday and produced before a court, which sent her to jail after rejecting her bail petition.

Ms. Hasina, who was Prime Minister during 1996-2001, was arrested in an extortion case involving Taka 2.96 crore, filed by a businessman, Azam J. Chowdhury, managing director of East Coast Trading Ltd., in June. Most of the top political leaders arrested so far have been charged with extortion.

After hearing for over two hours Ms. Hasina’s bail petition moved by an army of lawyers, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court ordered her sent to jail. She was driven to the newly built “Deputy Speaker House”, declared a sub-jail by the authorities, in the Parliament complex in Dhaka.

It was the most widely televised arrest of a top political leader in the country. Ms. Hasina, who has been living under an undeclared Government ban for the last few weeks, recently levelled a volley charges against the present rulers who want to bring about “political reforms”, supported by rebel leaders in both the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by Khaleda Zia.

“No one in my family nor I was involved in extortion. In the last five years, the BNP-led government had been looking for our mistakes, but couldn’t find any”, she told journalists at the court. “Don’t cry,” Ms. Hasina told a crying lawyer in the court and added, “They want to stop me from taking part in elections.” The 59-year-old daughter of the country’s slain founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was seen confident and composed. As Ms. Hasina was being taken by hundreds of police personnel and the elite Rapid Action Battalion from the court to the jail, party workers raised slogans in support of their leader. Before being arrested, she made senior presidium member Zillur Rahman as the party’s acting president. Mr. Zillur termed the arrest a conspiracy and demanded Ms. Hasina’s immediate release.

The outspoken leader, who recently alleged that the Government was attempting to break up political parties and obtain confessions from arrested party leaders by force, asked, “Why should we be harassed? This Government is the outcome of our movement. Why would the rights of the people be revoked?”

Earlier, at about 4:15 a.m., hundreds of security personnel cordoned Ms. Hasina’s residence in the city. She was arrested at 7:30 a.m.

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