Bangladesh sentences British MP, Sheikh Hasina’s niece, to prison

Former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her niece, British MP Tulip Siddiq, were both given five years in absentia by a court in Dhaka for corruption in a case involving the acquisition of plots of land.

Hasina, who has been living in exile in India since being toppled in an uprising last year, allegedly misused her position as premier in the transaction, according to Rabiul Alam, the judge of Dhaka’s Special Judge’s Court.

Sheikh Rehana, Hasina’s sister, and two other siblings helped her mother, Sheikh Rehana, her mother, and two other siblings obtain the plot for a government project in Dhaka, after Siddiq, an MP for the country’s ruling Labour party, was found guilty of corruptly influencing Hasina.

Rehana, who is reportedly no longer based in Bangladesh, was given a seven-year absentee prison sentence, and the trio were also fined 100, 000 taka ($820), which would add up to six more months in jail, according to the court.

Fourteen of the people indicted in the case received five-year sentences.

According to the AFP news agency, Khan Mainul Hasan, the Anti-Corruption Commission prosecutor, said his team had information about Siddiq’s correspondence with Hasina’s principal secretary Salahuddin Ahmed, who had allegedly been a part of the case.

Sheikh Hasina, who also took three plots for herself and her children, was asked by Lotus to give them plots, Hasan said. She called [Ahmed] over encrypted apps, and they even met him in Dhaka.

charges of “political motivation.”

They have dismissed them as politically motivated, according to Hasina and Siddiq, who did not nominate attorneys to defend the accusations.

Hasina, who was given a death sentence in absentia last month for crimes against humanity related to the protesters’ 2012 crackdown, refuted the ruling in a statement sent to AFP.

No nation is free of corruption, according to the statement. However, it is necessary to look into corruption in a manner that is not necessarily corrupt. She claimed that the ACC has today failed that test.

The verdict was “entirely predictable,” according to her Awami League party, and the anticorruption watchdog in Bangladesh was “a political mechanism used for political purposes,” according to a statement released by her Awami League party to The Associated Press news agency.

Siddiq, the MP for the London district of Hampstead and Highgate, has not yet made a public comment, but he has previously called the allegations “politically motivated smear.”

As the UK’s minister in charge of financial services and anticorruption efforts in January, she resigned because her relationships with her aunt were “distracting the work of the government.”

Her resignation was prompted by a probe into Siddiq’s connections to her aunt’s regime led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ethics adviser, which concluded that Starmer had not violated the ministerial code but had suggested that she should reconsider her responsibilities, according to the PA Media news agency.

There is no extradition agreement between the UK and Bangladesh.

Officials will get in touch with the UK government regarding Siddiq’s verdict, according to Hasan, the prosecutor.

Authorities claimed they had obtained the British MP’s passport, national identity card, and tax number after the prosecution claimed Siddiq was tried as a Bangladeshi citizen, according to AP reports.

Siddiq, however, has refuted the assertion, claiming that she is a British citizen and does not hold Bangladeshi citizenship.

In addition to her ineligibility, another court on Thursday handed Hasina a 21-year sentence in absentia for two separate cases involving the same township project, finding her guilty of illegally securing plots of land for herself and her family in the Dhaka development.