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Police in Bangladesh arrested two top leaders of the main opposition BNP on Friday, a day after the party planned a grand rally in the capital to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary-general Mirza Fahrul Islam Alamgir and standing committee member Mirza Abbas were snatched from their homes by detective department officers in separate pre-dawn raids in the capital.
“DB (Detective Department) officers arrested Mr. Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir from his Uttara (district) residence at around 3 am. There are cases (pending) against him,” Uttara Police Superintendent Zahirul Islam told reporters.
The official did not elaborate further, saying only that Alamgir was taken to the Detective Branch for subsequent legal proceedings as former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s BNP was waging an anti-government campaign.
Meanwhile, police also arrested Abbas, a member of the party’s standing committee and former Dhaka mayor, from his home in the capital Shahjahanpur in a pre-dawn raid, a BNP spokesman said.
BNP spokesman Zahiruddin Swapan said plainclothes told Alamgir that he was taken away “by order of the high command”.
The BNP has called on Prime Minister Hasina to step down in favor of new elections under a caretaker government rather than the ruling Awami League amid fears the elections will be rigged by her government.
Bangladesh will hold its next general election in 2024.
The developments come two days after police clashed with angry BNP militants in front of the Naya Paltan central office in preparation for the Dec. 10 rally, killing one and injuring dozens.
Police called the BNP’s Naya Paltan office a “crime scene” after claiming Molotov cocktails were found at the location.
Earlier this week, 15 Western embassies issued a joint statement calling on the country to allow free speech, peaceful assembly and fair elections.
The BNP is in a dispute with the government over the location of their scheduled rally. The party claims that some 2,000 of their activists have been arrested in the past few days for disrupting a December 10 rally.
Several government leaders and police said they expected the dispute over the location of the rally to subside as the BNP secured two alternative locations.
Ahead of the planned Dhaka rally, the BNP has held several peaceful public meetings in Bangladesh’s main cities over the past few weeks.
But the party claims the government is trying to irritate transporters by manipulating them to call a regional transport strike to prevent its supporters from attending the rally.
Despite being the main opposition party, the BNP has stayed out of parliament because they boycotted elections in 2014 and 2018, arguing that any elections under the current government would not be fair or credible.
The BNP has been in the wilderness since the 2018 elections, when it lost just six seats in the 300-member parliament.
Political analysts say the BNP has garnered massive support but the party is in tatters after the conviction of its chairman, 77-year-old Zia, on two graft charges.
In 2017, a court sentenced her to 17 years in prison, where she spent several months.
However, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, three-time Prime Minister Zia has been allowed to stay at her home in Dhaka and banned from any political activities under a special government rule.
The BNP has elected as acting chairman her eldest foreign son, Tarique Rahman, who is also a convict on several criminal and corruption charges.
He now remains in London, monitoring party activities abroad.
Several Bangladeshi courts have declared him a fugitive after he failed to appear in person to face the charges. PTI AR US National Security Agency
(Disclaimer: This story was auto-generated from a syndicate feed; only images and captions may have been edited by www.republicworld.com)
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