Khaleda son sentenced to life for attack on Hasina
19 others given death sentence over 2004 attack
Dhaka, Oct. 10: Tarique Rahman, the fugitive son of former Bangladesh Premier Khaleda Zia, was sentenced to life and 19 others were given death sentence by a court here on Wednesday over the 2004 grenade attack that killed 24 people and injured 500 others, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The attack on an Awami League rally on August 21, 2004 targeted Hasina, who was the opposition leader at that time. Ms Hasina survived the attack with a partial hearing loss. The verdict comes ahead of the election in December. Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party ( BNP) had boycotted the 2014 election.
Security was tightened in the capital as the accused were brought to the court. Rahman, 50, was tried in absentia with the court declaring him a “fugitive”. He now lives in London where he is believed to have sought asylum though the British authorities have declined to reveal his immigration status.
He leads the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party from exile. Former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar is among 19 people who were sentenced to death. Rahman, two former ministers and former top police and intelligence officials of the then BNP- led alliance government were among 49 accused in the cases.
Dhaka, Oct. 10: A Opposition BNP chief Khaleda Zia's fugitive son and political heir Tarique Rahman was sentenced to life and 19 others, including a former home minister, were given death penalty by a Bangladesh court Wednesday for their role in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2004.
The Opposition staged protests and slammed the sentences as “political vengeance” as police went on high alert across the South Asian country, with a bus in the north allegedly fire- bombed.
The 2004 attack in Dhaka on a rally by Sheikh Hasina, at the time in the opposition and now prime
minister, left her injured and killed 20 people.
Tarique Rahman, son of then- Premier and Hasina’s ally- tur ned- archrival Khaleda Zia, was among 49 people on trial, with Rahman charged with criminal conspiracy and multiple counts of murder.
Rahman, 50, was however tried in absentia after he fled the country for London in 2008. He was awarded life sentence.
He now leads the main Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party ( BNP) from exile after Zia was jailed in February for five years for corruption.
“Does politics mean attacking the Opposition?” judge Shahed Nur Uddin said over a portable loudhailer as he first read out the verdict and then handed down the sentences. “We thank God for the verdict,” prosecutor Mosharraf Hossain told reporters.
“We hoped that Tarique Rahman would get the death sentence,” he said, adding the court observed that Rahman played a key role in the attack.