DHAKA: Tarique Rahman, the fugitive son of former Bangladesh premier Khaleda Zia, was sentenced to life and 19 others were given death sentence by a court here on Wednesday over the 2004 grenade attack that killed 24 people and injured 500 others, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The special court awarded life imprisonment to Tarique Rahman, exiled son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who is already languishing inside a Dhaka jail following her conviction in a corruption case. DHAKA: A Bangladesh court on Wednesday sentenced Tarique Rahman, the acting chairman of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), to life in jail, and 19 more to death, over a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2004, lawyers said.The opposition is in disarray ahead of general elections set for December, with Tarique Rahman trying to run its campaign from exile in London after his mother and party leader, former premier Khaleda Zia, was jailed on corruption charges in February. The ruling against Tarique Rahman, who was tried in absentia as he is living in exile in London, dims the future of his Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) ahead of the South Asian nation’s next election in December. Senior BNP leaders, including former State Minister of Home Affairs Lutfuzzaman Babar and former Deputy Minister of Education Abdus Salam Pintu, were given capital punishment for hatching the plot to assassinate Hasina. Minutes into Hasina’s speech at the rally in 2004, assailants threw grenades that killed 24 people and wounded more than 500, most of them workers of her Awami League party, which was in the opposition at the time. She has been on trial in a special room of the prison on additional graft charges that her supporters say are politically motivated.
A Dhaka court sentences 19 people to death, including two former ministers, and sentences Bangladesh Nationalist Party acting chairman Tarique Rahman to life imprisonment over a 2004 attack on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.