Bangladesh’s exiled acting opposition leader gets jail term in absentia for graft

DHAKA (Reuters) – A Bangladesh court on Wednesday sentenced the exiled acting chairman of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and his wife to jail in absentia after finding them guilty of accumulating wealth beyond their declared income.

The sentences come amid large BNP protest rallies, calling for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down and for the next election, due in January, to be held under a neutral caretaker government – a demand her government has rejected.

Tarique Rahman was sentenced to nine years in jail. He has also been fined 30 million taka ($274,200) in the case filed in 2007, Public Prosecutor Mosharrof Hossain told reporters after the verdict and sentence were announced amid protests by pro-BNP lawyers in the court premises.

His wife was sentenced to three years in jail. Bangladesh does not have an extradition treaty with Britain, where Rahman and his wife have lived since 2008. But he will be jailed if he returns to Bangladesh.

The opposition has been in disarray since Rahman’s mother and party leader, former premier Khaleda Zia, was jailed on corruption charges in 2018, with Rahman trying to run its campaign from exile.

The BNP rejected Wednesday’s court ruling, calling it a “dictated verdict through the so-called trial process carried out as per a blueprint of the government”.

In 2016, Rahman was handed down a seven-year jail term in a money-laundering case. He was also sentenced to prison in 2018 over a plot to assassinate Hasina in 2004 when she was in the opposition. He denies all charges against him.

Hasina, who has maintained tight control since coming to power in 2009, has been accused of authoritarianism, human rights violations, cracking down on free speech and suppressing dissent while jailing her critics.

The United States and international rights groups said they were concerned about reports of intimidation and political violence during protests in Bangladesh over the weekend against Hasina.

(Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Nick Macfie)