A COURT in Dhaka has sentenced former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in absentia to five years in prison and her niece, British MP Tulip Siddiq to two, for corruption in a case involving the acquisition of plots of land.
Rabiul Alam, the judge of Dhaka’s Special Judge’s Court, said on Monday that Hasina – who has lived in exile in India since being toppled in an uprising last year misused her power as premier in the transaction.
Siddiq, an MP for the United Kingdom’s governing Labour party, was found guilty of corruptly influencing Hasina to help her mother – Sheikh Rehana, Hasina’s sister and two siblings acquire the plot in a government project in Dhaka.
Rehana, who is reportedly no longer based in Bangladesh, was sentenced to seven years in prison in absentia, with the trio also fined 100,000 taka ($820) each, which would result in an additional six months in prison if they failed to pay, the court said.
Fourteen others charged in the case were handed five-year sentences.
Khan Mainul Hasan, prosecutor for the Anti-Corruption Commission, said his team had details of Siddiq’s correspondence with Salahuddin Ahmed, Hasina’s principal secretary, exposing her role in the case, the AFP news agency reported.
“Tulip insisted that her aunt Sheikh Hasina allocate plots for her mother and siblings, as she herself took three – one for her and two for her children,” Hasan said. “She called [Ahmed], communicated via some encrypted apps, and even met him while she was in Dhaka.”
Hasina and Siddiq – who did not appoint lawyers to defend the charges – have dismissed them as politically motivated.
Hasina, who was sentenced to death in absentia last month for crimes against humanity involving the crackdown on protesters last year, rejected the verdict in a statement mailed to AFP.
“No country is free from corruption. But corruption needs to be investigated in a way that is not itself corrupt. The ACC has failed that test today,” she said.
Her Awami League party said in a statement sent to The Associated Press news agency that the verdict was “entirely predictable”, and that Bangladesh’s anticorruption watchdog was “a political mechanism used for political ends”.
Siddiq, MP for London’s Hampstead and Highgate constituency, has not yet commented publicly, but has previously dismissed the allegations as a “politically motivated smear”.
Her ties to her aunt led her to resign in January as the UK’s minister responsible for financial services and anticorruption efforts, saying the scrutiny over the relationship was becoming “a distraction from the work of the government”.
Her resignation came after an investigation by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ethics adviser into Siddiq’s links to her aunt’s regime, which found she had not breached the ministerial code, but recommended that Starmer reconsider her responsibilities, the PA Media news agency reported.
The UK does not have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh.
Hasan, the prosecutor, said officials would contact the UK government through Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding Siddiq’s verdict.
The prosecution said Siddiq was tried as a Bangladeshi citizen, AP reported, with authorities saying they had obtained a Bangladeshi passport, national identity card and tax number for the British MP.
But Siddiq has disputed the claim and said she is a British citizen and does not hold Bangladeshi citizenship.
On Thursday, another court sentenced Hasina in absentia to 21 years in separate cases involving the same township project, finding her guilty of illegally securing plots of land in the Dhaka development for herself and her family, despite their ineligibility.
Hasina’s son and daughter were also sentenced to five years in jail each by the court in one of the cases.