DHAKA —
Bangladeshi police said on Tuesday that they had arrested the chief of the
country’s largest Islamist party, days after it announced it would join the
main opposition in protests to oust Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina.
اضافة اعلان
Counter-terrorism
officers arrested Jamaat-e-Islami party emir Shafiqur Rahman in
Dhaka,
metropolitan police spokesman Faruq Ahmed said, without elaborating on the
charges.
A spokesman for
Jamaat — the country’s third-largest political party, which has been banned
from contesting elections since 2012 — condemned the 64-year-old’s arrest,
saying it was intended to “scuttle the opposition’s anti-government movement”.
“This is just
another episode of the unjust oppression continuing against the party for the
last 15 years,” Matiur Rahman Akand, Jamaat’s publicity secretary, told AFP.
For years, Jamaat
was a major ally of the right-of-center main opposition
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and their coalition ruled the country between 2001–2006.
But after Hasina
came to power in 2009, Jamaat’s entire leadership was arrested and tried for
war crimes dating back to the country’s 1971 independence war against Pakistan.
Five of its top
leaders were hanged between 2013 and 2016 after they were found guilty by a war
crimes court.
The party called
the trials politically motivated and part of a wider vendetta against its
leaders.
Hundreds of party
activists were shot dead and tens of thousands detained after they staged
violent protests against the executions.
The fresh arrest
of Jamaat’s chief came days after two of the BNP’s leaders were arrested on
charges of inciting violence on the eve of a giant anti-government rally on
Saturday.
The BNP has
demanded Hasina step down and let a caretaker government hold a free and fair
election.
The opposition
says a credible vote under Hasina is impossible after she was accused of
rigging the past two general elections in 2014 and 2018.
Jamaat and several
left-leaning and centrist parties have supported the BNP’s demands. They also
announced they would hold protests jointly with the BNP.
Police last month
also arrested Rahman’s son, Rafat Sadik Saifullah, on extremism charges and remanded
him in custody under the country’s harsh anti-terrorism laws.
Protests sparked
by an ongoing economic crisis — which has seen power cuts and fuel price hikes
— have erupted across the country in recent months.
Thousands of opposition
activists have been arrested.
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