Labour MP Tulip Siddiq has been sentenced to 2 years in jail for corruption in Bangladesh.
Ms Siddiq was accused of acquiring plots of land from her aunt, the nation’s former prime minister, within the capital Dhaka’s diplomatic zone, by “abuse of power and influence”.
She was being tried in absentia.
Her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, was ousted final 12 months and has since been sentenced to demise, though she fled to India earlier than she may very well be arrested.
Ms Siddiq, her niece, has described herself as “collateral damage” within the new authorities’s marketing campaign in opposition to Ms Hasina, and beforehand mentioned the trial was based mostly on “fabricated accusations and driven by a clear political vendetta”.
The Labour MP resigned her ministerial put up earlier this 12 months after she was accused of illegally receiving a plot of land from her aunt.
An investigation by Sir Keir Starmer’s ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, didn’t discover “evidence of improprieties,” however he mentioned it was “regrettable” that Ms Siddiq had not been extra alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Final week, a gaggle of outstanding British legal professionals and former cupboard ministers wrote an open letter elevating “profound concerns” over Ms Siddiq’s trial in Bangladesh.
Barrister Cherie Blair, who’s married to ex-prime minister Tony Blair, Sir Robert Buckland, who served as justice secretary, and Dominic Grieve, an ex-attorney common, wrote that the prison proceedings in opposition to Ms Siddiq have been “artificial and a contrived and unfair way of pursuing a prosecution”.
The legal professionals wrote that Ms Siddiq didn’t have a “proper opportunity of defending herself”.
“She is being tried in her absence without justification and… the proceedings fall far short of standards of fairness recognised internationally,” they mentioned.
The letter was additionally signed by high-profile legal professionals Philippe Sands and Geoffrey Robertson.
They known as for the Bangladeshi authorities to place all of the allegations to Ms Siddiq’s legal professionals “so that she has a fair opportunity to address them”.
Former prime minister: Investigation ‘corrupt’
Awami League, a banned political social gathering in Bangladesh, led by Ms Hasina, mentioned that the verdicts have been “entirely predictable… just as other recent ACC (Anti-Corruption Commission) cases have been,” and accused the fee of being led by “desperate, unelected men”.
Ms Hasina then added in an announcement by the social gathering: “No country is free from corruption. But corruption needs to be investigated in a way that is not itself corrupt.
“The ACC has failed that take a look at immediately. It’s managed by an unelected authorities run by the Awami League’s political opponents.
“It has exclusively targeted members of the Awami League, or those seen to be sympathetic to our party, and done nothing to prosecute or even investigate the cronyism that has escalated in Bangladesh since Dr Mohammad Yunus and his so-called interim government took power.”
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