A Dhaka court on Thursday sentenced ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to 21 years in prison after finding her guilty of alleged irregularities in the allocation of plots under a government housing scheme. The verdict was delivered following a trial conducted in her absence.
The court also handed five-year prison terms to her two children, who were similarly tried in absentia.
Dhaka Special Judge Court-5 handed down the sentences to 78-year-old Hasina, her son Sajib Wajed Joy and daughter Saima Wazed Putul in three cases over corruption charges in the government housing project at Purbachal, adjacent to the capital.
Hasina was sentenced to death earlier this month for crimes against humanity involving the crackdown on the mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule last year.
The court found Hasina guilty of illegally securing plots in the Purbachal New Town project for herself and her family despite their ineligibility.
“The plot was allotted to Sheikh Hasina without any application and in a manner that exceeded the legally authorised jurisdiction,” Dhaka Special Court Judge Mohammad Abdullah Al Mamun said while delivering the judgment.
Hasina was sentenced to seven years in each of the three cases involving the alleged allocation, totalling 21 years in prison.
Mamun said Hasina would need to serve them consecutively.
Apart from the Hasina family, 20 others, including former junior minister for housing Sharif Ahmed and officials of the housing ministry and Rajdhani Unyan Kartripakkah, were tried in the cases and except one, all were sentenced to varying prison terms. The man who was acquitted is a junior officer of the ministry. Only one of the accused faced the trial in person and he was sentenced to three years.
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Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission filed six cases between January 12 to 14 and submitted charge-sheets in all of them on March 10, while the verdict on the three cases came on Tuesday.
She is in exile in India, and all of the trials have been conducted in absentia.
Meanwhile, the Awami League on Tuesday announced nationwide agitations and “resistance marches” until November 30. The move comes in response to the death sentence handed to the former premier by what the party has denounced as an “illegal” tribunal.
