Bangladeshi police said on Tuesday that they had arrested the chief of thecountry’s largest Islamist party, days after it announced it would join themain opposition in protests to oust Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Counter-terrorism officers arrested Jamaat-e-Islami party emir ShafiqurRahman in Dhaka, metropolitan police spokesman Faruq Ahmed said, withoutelaborating on the charges.
A spokesman for Jamaat — the country’s third-largest political party,which has been banned from contesting elections since 2012 — condemned the64-year-old’s arrest, saying it was intended to “scuttle the opposition’santi-government movement”.
“This is just another episode of the unjust oppression continuing againstthe party for the last 15 years,” Matiur Rahman Akand, Jamaat’s publicitysecretary, told AFP.
For years, Jamaat was a major ally of the right-of-centre main oppositionBangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and their coalition ruled the countrybetween 2001-2006.
But after Hasina came to power in 2009, Jamaat’s entire leadership wasarrested and tried for war crimes dating back to the country’s 1971independence war against Pakistan.
Five of its top leaders were hanged between 2013 and 2016 after they werefound guilty by a war crimes court.
The party called the trials politically motivated and part of a widervendetta against its leaders.
Hundreds of party activists were shot dead and tens of thousands detainedafter they staged violent protests against the executions.
The fresh arrest of Jamaat’s chief came days after two of the BNP’s leaderswere arrested on charges of inciting violence on the eve of a giantanti-government rally on Saturday.
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The BNP has demanded Hasina step down and let a caretaker government hold afree and fair election.
The opposition says a credible vote under Hasina is impossible after shewas accused of rigging the past two general elections in 2014 and 2018.
Jamaat and several left-leaning and centrist parties have supported theBNP’s demands. They also announced they would hold protests jointly withthe BNP.
Police last month also arrested Rahman’s son, Rafat Sadik Saifullah, onextremism charges and remanded him in custody under the country’s harshanti-terrorism laws.
Protests sparked by an ongoing economic crisis — which has seen power cutsand fuel price hikes — have erupted across the country in recent months.
Thousands of opposition activists have been arrested.
Western governments, along with the United Nations, have expressed concernsover the political climate in Bangladesh, one of the fastest-growingeconomies in Asia. APP/AFP
