BANGLADESH ARRESTS HEAD OF LARGEST MUSLIM PARTY AS CRACKDOWN INTENSIFIES

Protest march by Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami in Chittagong to protest against the unjust arrest of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s Honorable Amir Dr. Shafiqur Rahman.

Wed 14 December 2022:

The leader of Bangladesh’s largest Muslim party, Jamaat-e-Islami (Bangladesh Islamic Assembly), has been arrested just days after announcing that the party would join opposition-led protests calling for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation.

“Shafiqur Rahman was arrested from his residence at around 1 am on 13th December [19:00 GMT, December 12],” a statement from the party’s acting secretary general, Maulana ATM Masum, said on Tuesday.

Leader of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami Dr. Shafiqur Rahman was arrested by the police from a house in Dhaka.

“We are vehemently condemning and protesting his arrest,” Masum said, calling the authorities for his immediate and unconditional release.

The third-largest political party in the nation, Jamaat, which has been barred from running in elections since 2012, was for many years a key partner of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and their coalition ruled the nation from 2001 to 2006.

BANGLADESH OPPOSITION STAGES PROTESTS AS IT CHALLENGES PM HASINA

But after Hasina took office in 2009, the whole Jamaat leadership was detained and put on trial for war crimes committed during the nation’s 1971 war of independence with Pakistan.

A war crimes court found five of its top leaders guilty, and between 2013 and 2016, they were all hung. Following violent protests against the executions, hundreds of party members were shot to death and tens of thousands were imprisoned.

The party called the trials politically motivated and part of a wider vendetta against its leaders.

As the South Asian centre for garment manufacture struggled with a developing economic crisis, the opposition has been calling for Hasina to step down and allow a caretaker administration to hold free and fair elections.

The 76-year-old party leader and twice-elected prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia is currently imprisoned after being found guilty on two counts of corruption in 2018. The BNP has also sought her release.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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