bdnews24.com :
BNP leaders thought Khaleda Zia would get out on bail after she was sentenced to prison for graft involving the Zia Orphanage Trust.
It never happened. Instead they saw another graft verdict being announced against the former prime minister. The BNP chief was shown arrested in further cases and had stayed behind bars during the general election last year.
Khaleda has been serving her sentence in a
jailhouse at Najimuddin Road, which once housed the Dhaka Central Jail. The 73-year-old politician had been its only prisoner for a year.
It was “beyond imagination” that the head of the BNP would be behind bars for this long, remarked Moudud Ahmed, former law minister and the party’s standing committee member.
“We never imagined that the most popular leader in Bangladesh, who was elected prime minister three times, will be punished in a baseless case,” he told a programme on Thursday.
“She has appealed against the verdict that ordered her to serve five years in prison, and therefore she cannot be kept in jail more than seven days after the filing.”
In politics for 36 years, it is not Khaleda’s first time in prison. During the 2007 emergency rule started by a military backed caretaker government, the BNP chief spent one year and seven days in a sub-jail set up in a house in the national parliament complex.
The difference now is that she has been convicted of graft. The case for graft in the Zia Orphanage Trust is one of the cases started against her during emergency rule.
On Feb 8 of 2017, she was sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling Tk 20 million meant for orphans during her last term as prime minister.
Khaleda was taken to the old jailhouse on the same day Dhaka Judge Md Akhtaruzzaman announced the verdict. BNP leaders, from the very beginning, had been opposing the move to lock her up in that location.
But the government claimed there were good arrangements for Khaleda in the old building, citing an unprecedented privilege it granted so that Khaleda’s maid Fatema Begum can serve her in jail.
After a few months, Khaleda secured bail in the graft case. But the authorities kept her in prison, showing her as a suspect arrested in a several other cases. BNP leaders have been calling the move a ‘conspiracy’ to keep her locked up in prison.
In October, the verdict of her other graft trial involving the Zia Charity Trust was announced, in which she was handed seven years in jail by Judge Akhtaruzzaman.
Within one day of the Charity verdict, the High Court gave its verdict in the appeal over the verdict for Zia Orphanage Trust Graft.
The High Court disagreed with Judge Akhtaruzzaman who gave Khaleda a short sentence considering her age and status. The High Court doubled her sentence to ten years.
“It is rational that she be given the highest punishment for sake of justice, so that a person thinks twice before committing such a crime while holding the top office.”
BNP leaders thought Khaleda Zia would get out on bail after she was sentenced to prison for graft involving the Zia Orphanage Trust.
It never happened. Instead they saw another graft verdict being announced against the former prime minister. The BNP chief was shown arrested in further cases and had stayed behind bars during the general election last year.
Khaleda has been serving her sentence in a
jailhouse at Najimuddin Road, which once housed the Dhaka Central Jail. The 73-year-old politician had been its only prisoner for a year.
It was “beyond imagination” that the head of the BNP would be behind bars for this long, remarked Moudud Ahmed, former law minister and the party’s standing committee member.
“We never imagined that the most popular leader in Bangladesh, who was elected prime minister three times, will be punished in a baseless case,” he told a programme on Thursday.
“She has appealed against the verdict that ordered her to serve five years in prison, and therefore she cannot be kept in jail more than seven days after the filing.”
In politics for 36 years, it is not Khaleda’s first time in prison. During the 2007 emergency rule started by a military backed caretaker government, the BNP chief spent one year and seven days in a sub-jail set up in a house in the national parliament complex.
The difference now is that she has been convicted of graft. The case for graft in the Zia Orphanage Trust is one of the cases started against her during emergency rule.
On Feb 8 of 2017, she was sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling Tk 20 million meant for orphans during her last term as prime minister.
Khaleda was taken to the old jailhouse on the same day Dhaka Judge Md Akhtaruzzaman announced the verdict. BNP leaders, from the very beginning, had been opposing the move to lock her up in that location.
But the government claimed there were good arrangements for Khaleda in the old building, citing an unprecedented privilege it granted so that Khaleda’s maid Fatema Begum can serve her in jail.
After a few months, Khaleda secured bail in the graft case. But the authorities kept her in prison, showing her as a suspect arrested in a several other cases. BNP leaders have been calling the move a ‘conspiracy’ to keep her locked up in prison.
In October, the verdict of her other graft trial involving the Zia Charity Trust was announced, in which she was handed seven years in jail by Judge Akhtaruzzaman.
Within one day of the Charity verdict, the High Court gave its verdict in the appeal over the verdict for Zia Orphanage Trust Graft.
The High Court disagreed with Judge Akhtaruzzaman who gave Khaleda a short sentence considering her age and status. The High Court doubled her sentence to ten years.
“It is rational that she be given the highest punishment for sake of justice, so that a person thinks twice before committing such a crime while holding the top office.”
