{"id":20367,"date":"2018-10-30T07:22:40","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T07:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20367"},"modified":"2018-10-30T07:22:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T07:22:40","slug":"bangladesh-court-doubles-jail-term-for-opposition-leader-zia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20367","title":{"rendered":"Bangladesh court doubles jail term for opposition leader Zia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A Bangladeshi court has doubled the jail term of opposition leader Khaleda Zia<\/a> from five to 10 years in a corruption case following an appeal by the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).<\/p>\n

The two-time former prime minister was sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment in February in the\u00a0Zia Orphanage Trust corruption<\/a> case. She has been in jail since then.<\/p>\n

Bangladesh<\/a>‘s imprisoned opposition leader was handed another seven years in prison on Monday for corruption, charges her supporters say are politically motivated to prevent her from running in general elections<\/a> due by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Zia, chairperson of the country’s main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and five others were accused of embezzlement of funds meant for charity.<\/p>\n

The six, including her son and heir-apparent Tarique Rahman,<\/span>\u00a0were convicted<\/a> in February for embezzling over $252,000 from foreign donations intended for a charity named after former President Ziaur Rahman, Zia’s husband.<\/p>\n

“Now, there’s no chance for the BNP chief to contest the next election,” Khurshid Alam Khan, a lawyer for the government, told reporters.<\/p>\n

Khaleda and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina<\/a>, both related to former national leaders, have dominated politics in Bangladesh for more than two decades, nursing a long and bitter rivalry.<\/p>\n

Protest expected<\/h2>\n

Zia’s party, the BNP, has vowed nationwide marches later on Tuesday to protest against the verdict.<\/p>\n

The latest court ruling deals a crushing blow to the BNP and its embattled leader, who despite being jailed, had clung to a faint hope of running against Hasina in December.<\/p>\n

“She cannot contest the elections unless the conviction is set aside by a higher court,” Bangladesh’s attorney general Mahbubey Alam told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n

In February, when Zia, 73, was first sent to jail, violent clashes had occurred in major cities across the Muslim-majority democracy of 160 million, with opposition demonstrators clashing with police and activists from the ruling party.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, her son Tarique Rahman was jailed for life in absentia over a 2004 grenade attack<\/a> on a political rally led by Hasina, in which 20 people were killed. Rahman lives in exile in London.<\/p>\n

In recent months, Zia’s health has deteriorated inside the abandoned 19th-century jail – where she is the only inmate – with a physician saying that arthritis has rendered her left hand useless.<\/p>\n

Her lawyers have accused the government of putting her health at risk by refusing her specialised care in prison.<\/p>\n

Zia entered politics in the mid-1980s after her husband, a former military dictator, was assassinated in an abortive coup.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Bangladeshi court has doubled the jail term of opposition leader Khaleda Zia from five to 10 years in a corruption case following an appeal by the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC). The two-time former prime minister was sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment in February in the\u00a0Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case. She has been in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":20368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}