Dhaka: A second arrest warrant has been issued against former Bangladesh prime minister and Opposition leader Khaleda Zia’s fugitive son Tarique Rahman for calling Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman a “friend of Pakistan.”
The warrant against the 50-year-old senior vice president of the Bangaldesh Nationalist Party (BNP) was issued in a case filed for calling the Bangabandhu a “Pakbandhu” (friend of Pakistan) at a programme in London on September 29 last year.
Bangabandhu Foundation President Moshiur Malek, who filed the case, said Tarique’s claim was “false and intentional.” Such remarks amounted to a distortion of the history of Bangladesh’s liberation war against Pakistan, he said. Malek, in his plea, said that Tarique also described his father Zia-ur Rahman as the first president of Bangladesh.
“Sheikh Mujibur Rahman cannot be the Father of the Nation. He returned to the country with a Pakistani passport. Someone who accepts Pakistani passport even after Bangladesh’s independence is a citizen of that country according to law,” Tarique had said, according to a recorded tape of his statement at the programme.
“(Dhaka’s) Metropolitan Magistrate court issued the arrest warrant yesterday,” a government prosecutor told PTI. This was the second arrest warrant against Tarique. The INTERPOL in April issued a “red notice” seeking his arrest on charges of masterminding the 2004 grenade attack on an Awami League rally that left 24 people dead.
The High Court earlier this year banned broadcast, publication and dissemination of statements of the “fugitive.” Tarique was arrested during the military-backed caretaker government in 2007 on charges of corruption.
He had been implicated in a dozen of corruption cases then. After being released on parole, he went to the UK for treatment in September 2008 and has not returned since. BNP chief Zia blames political vendetta by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government for her son’s prosecution. (PTI)
