The former leader and her niece, UK lawmaker Tulip Siddiq, were sentenced in absentia for corruption in a land deal.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A court in Dhaka has sentenced former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in absentia to five years in prison and her niece, British MP Tulip Siddiq to two, for corruption in a case involving the acquisition of plots of land.<\/p>\n Rabiul Alam, the judge of Dhaka\u2019s Special Judge\u2019s Court, said on Monday that Hasina \u2013 who has lived in exile in India since being toppled in an uprising last year \u2013 misused her power as premier in the transaction.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Siddiq, an MP for the United Kingdom\u2019s governing Labour party, was found guilty of corruptly influencing Hasina to help her mother \u2013 Sheikh Rehana, Hasina\u2019s sister \u2013 and two siblings acquire the plot in a government project in Dhaka.<\/p>\n Rehana, who is reportedly no longer based in Bangladesh, was sentenced to seven years in prison in absentia, with the trio also fined 100,000 taka ($820) each, which would result in an additional six months in prison if they failed to pay, the court said.<\/p>\n Fourteen others charged in the case were handed five-year sentences.<\/p>\n Khan Mainul Hasan, prosecutor for the Anti-Corruption Commission, said his team had details of Siddiq\u2019s correspondence with Salahuddin Ahmed, Hasina\u2019s principal secretary, exposing her role in the case, the AFP news agency reported.<\/p>\n \u201cTulip insisted that her aunt Sheikh Hasina allocate plots for her mother and siblings, as she herself took three \u2013 one for her and two for her children,\u201d Hasan said. \u201cShe called [Ahmed], communicated via some encrypted apps, and even met him while she was in Dhaka.\u201d<\/p>\n Hasina and Siddiq \u2013 who did not appoint lawyers to defend the charges \u2013 have dismissed them as politically motivated.<\/p>\n Hasina, who was sentenced to death in absentia last month for crimes against humanity involving the crackdown on protesters last year, rejected the verdict in a statement mailed to AFP.<\/p>\n \u201cNo country is free from corruption. But corruption needs to be investigated in a way that is not itself corrupt. The ACC has failed that test today,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Her Awami League party said in a statement sent to The Associated Press news agency that the verdict was \u201centirely predictable\u201d, and that Bangladesh\u2019s anticorruption watchdog was \u201ca political mechanism used for political ends\u201d.<\/p>\n Siddiq, MP for London\u2019s Hampstead and Highgate constituency, has not yet commented publicly, but has previously dismissed the allegations as a \u201cpolitically motivated smear\u201d.<\/p>\n Her ties to her aunt led her to resign in January as the UK\u2019s minister responsible for financial services and anticorruption efforts, saying the scrutiny over the relationship was becoming \u201ca distraction from the work of the government\u201d.<\/p>\n Her resignation came after an investigation by Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2019s ethics adviser into Siddiq\u2019s links to her aunt\u2019s regime, which found she had not breached the ministerial code, but recommended that Starmer reconsider her responsibilities, the PA Media news agency reported.<\/p>\n The UK does not have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh.<\/p>\n Hasan, the prosecutor, said officials would contact the UK government through Bangladesh\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding Siddiq\u2019s verdict.<\/p>\n The prosecution said Siddiq was tried as a Bangladeshi citizen, AP reported, with authorities saying they had obtained a Bangladeshi passport, national identity card and tax number for the British MP.<\/p>\n But Siddiq has disputed the claim and said she is a British citizen and does not hold Bangladeshi citizenship.<\/p>\n On Thursday, another court sentenced Hasina in absentia to 21 years in separate cases involving the same township project, finding her guilty of illegally securing plots of land in the Dhaka development for herself and her family, despite their ineligibility.<\/p>\n Hasina\u2019s son and daughter were also sentenced to five years in jail each by the court in one of the cases.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The former leader and her niece, UK lawmaker Tulip Siddiq, were sentenced in absentia for corruption in a land deal. A court in Dhaka has sentenced former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in absentia to five years in prison and her niece, British MP Tulip Siddiq to two, for corruption in a case involving the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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Charges \u2018politically motivated\u2019<\/h2>\n
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