Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali on Thursday said, to bring back convict Tarique Rahman home from London is under process.
“The government is determined to bring back Tarique Rahman from London. It has sent several letters to the British government as part of that process,” Mahmood Ali said.
The Minister told this in a press briefing in the Secretariat on Thursday.
The press meet was arranged on the occasion of the two-day 45th session of the OIC Council of Foreign
Ministers beginning on Saturday at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in the city.
“We shall continue our efforts to bring back Tarique Rahman,” he said.
On Wednesday, replying to a query, the Prime Minister said that the government had been trying to bring back Tarique Rahman from the United Kingdom as he was a ‘convicted fugitive.’
She said, “We are in touch with the British government. The BNP has made a convicted person its chairperson, proving the party’s political bankruptcy.”
Tarique left Bangladesh for London in September 2008 for treatment.
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam on April 23 alleged that Tarique Rahman had surrendered his passport to the British government as a mark of giving up his Bangladeshi citizenship.
Shahriar and other Awami League leaders argued that Tarique was no more a citizen of Bangladesh as he surrendered his passport to UK government.
BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on April 24 disclosed that Tarique surrendered his Bangladesh passport to British home office to get ‘political asylum.’
Tarique Rahman, facing over a dozen of cases, was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment and fined Tk 20 crore by the High Court in a money laundering case in 2016.
He was also convicted along with his mother Khaleda Zia in the Zia Orphanage Trust case where he was sentenced to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment and fined Tk 2.10 crore.
