Roundup: Bangladesh’s ex-PM Khaleda bailed in graft case but can’t walk out of jail

DHAKA, May 17 (NsNewsWire) — Bangladesh’s apex court has upheld bail for ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia in a graft case in which the country’s largest opposition party chief is currently serving a five-year jail term, reports Xinhua.
The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain on Wednesday passed the order, dismissing the appeals filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission and the government challenging the High Courts bail to Khaleda.
However, the Supreme Court order will not pave the way for Zia to walk out of prison as her lawyers said she is being held behind bars in some other cases.
The 72-year-old leader Khaleda Zia, chairperson of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was found guilty of the corruption charge and sentenced to five years in prison on Feb. 8.
Shortly after the verdict, Zia was taken to a jail in Dhaka.
In the politically significant Zia Orphanage Trust graft case ahead of the next parliamentary elections slated for early 2019, the court also awarded 10 years of sentence to five others including Zia’s son Tarique Rahman, now acting chairman of BNP and living in London, in the case with a fine of 21 million taka each (250,000 U.S. dollars).
The Feb. 8 verdict aroused anger among many of the BNP party men, some of whom in the court starting to cry on hearing it.
Zia in her 35 years of political career went to the jail several times but never due to conviction.
Zia was made vice-chairperson of BNP in 1981 after the assassination of her husband and former president Ziaur Rahman. She became the chairperson of the party in 1984, a post she is holding still today.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League (AL) party, which rose to power with a landslide election victory in early 2009 and won its second term in 2014, now eyes for the third consecutive victory.
The AL is facing challenges from Zia’s BNP, which boycotted the 2014 elections.
Some 21 parties including Zia’s BNP boycotted the parliament elections in 2014 as Hasina did not heed their demand for a non-party caretaker government to hold the polls.
BNP has been demanding parliament polls under a non-party government.
Senior BNP Leader Barrister Moudud Ahmed said the BNP chief had been made accused in a number of cases pending in the trial court.
Moudud, also a counsel for Khaleda, expressed the hope that she will soon return among them walking out of jail, foiling all of the government’s plots after she gets bail in other cases.
BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said the main motive of the graft case was to malign Khaleda Zia and bar her from the upcoming election.
Hasina’s ruling AL party had earlier said the Khaleda Zia graft case verdict is totally a matter of the court and the party has nothing to do with it.  Enditem