Khaleda to stand trial for ordering murders: PM

The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Saturday said BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia would have to stand trial for ordering murders and terror acts. ‘She [Khaleda] will have to stand trial in murder cases as other killers do … She is a leader of militants and would get punishment for ordering terror acts,’ the prime minister said at a public rally at Suhrawardy Udyan in the capital. Hasina, also president of the Awami League, said she would not tolerate continued attempts to hamper the country’s progress by enforcing blockade and hartals and killing innocent people. ‘I would not tolerate killing of people for whose wellbeing the father of the nation [Sheikh Mujibur Rahman] struggled all his life and for whom we are working now. I would not tolerate any attempts to obstruct the country’s progress…It is now a matter of time,’ she said. Hasina said that Khaleda Zia is not o

nly an accused in graft cases but also stands accused of ordering killings. Referring to the crude bomb attacks on the Awami League activists while coming to join the rally, the prime minister said Khaleda Zia had ordered the attacks. Terming ‘militants’ the people who were carrying out bomb attacks on innocent people, Hasina said there would be no place for militants on the soil of Bangladesh and the terrors would be put on trial in accordance with international laws. She said Khaleda Zia had unleashed militants to suppress the nation. Pakistani military rulers had also attempted to suppress the Bengali nation during and before the War of Liberation in 1971 but failed. Khaleda Zia would also fail to do so. Hasina said that the killers, whatever their identities might be – BNP, Shibir or Juba Dal – and the people who would try to protect the killers would be brought to justice. During her half an hour speech, Hasina did neither refer to the BNP’s demand for an immediate inclusive election under a non-partisan government nor said anything about whether she intended to stay in power until 2019, but expressed her resolve to turn Bangladesh into a middle-income nation by 2021 and a developed nation by 2041.

The prime minister ridiculed the BNP’s desperate attempts to usurp state power and said the BNP chairperson had expected different quarters to help her come to power. ‘But nobody did come to help her, even foreign quarters also disappointed her…Now she pins her hopes on the militants to come to power,’ she said. Hasina urged the people to unite and build up resistance against the militants. Indicating the civil society, she said that a section of so-called intellectuals, including university teachers, had been supporting the activities of the BNP chairperson. ‘They seem to have turned a blind eye to  people being burnt to death…They seem unwilling to believe when it is reported that Chhatra Dal and Juba Dal activists had their hands blown off while making bombs,’ she said. Referring to the punishment of a BNP man by a US court for bribing FBI in an attempt to abduct her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, Hasina said what answer Khaleda Zia would give in this connection. The prime minister said that the BNP chairperson had committed a blunder by boycotting the January 5 elections and by trying to foil it. Hasina said nobody had responded to the BNP chairperson’s call for movement in the last 61 days. She asked the BNP chairperson why she was dodging the courts if she was true to her conscience that she did not commit corruption. Awami League organised the rally to mark the 44th anniversary of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s historic speech at Suhrawardy Udyan in the city on March 7 in 1971. Awami League advisory council members Amir Hossain Amu, Tofail Ahmed and Suranjit Sengupta, presidium members Matia Chowdhury, Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim and Mohammad Nasim addressed, among others, the rally.

- See more at: http://newagebd.net/101100/khaleda-to-stand-trial-for-ordering-murders-pm/#sthash.6G4xJ7EI.dpuf