DHAKA, 18 January 2008 — The Bangladesh High Court yesterday stayed the trial of former Prime Minister Hasina Wajed, accused of extortion, hours after a lower court took up the case for hearing. The High Court ordered that the hearing of the case be adjourned until it heard an appeal by the former premier. Earlier, the Dhaka sessions court began hearing of the case and adjourned it for three days. Hasina has been accused of extorting more than $400,000 from a businessman.
“The former prime minister and a co-accused were taken to the dock as a judge formally started the prosecution against them,” a court official said earlier.
The former premier’s lawyers argued that she was being tried under the laws of emergency for a crime that was allegedly committed before the imposition of emergency in January 2007.
“The High Court has stayed the trial on this extortion case until it gives a decision on Hasina’s plea,” Hasina’s lawyer Rafiqul Haque, told reporters.
The Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions judge, Mohammad Azizul Haque, on Sunday charged Hasina and her cousin Sheikh Selim, a former minister in her Cabinet, with illegally taking 30 million taka ($440,000) from a businessman when Hasina was in power between 1996 and 2001. Both of them denied the charge. Hasina’s only sister Rehana, another co-accused in the case who is living abroad, has been declared an absconder by police and the court said it would try her in absentia.
Earlier, the trial hearing was adjourned until Monday after defense lawyers complained jail authorities had not allowed them to meet Hasina to discuss her defense.
The court sat in a house near the building in Dhaka’s sprawling Parliament compound where Hasina has been held since her arrest in July last year.
She faces a second charge, due in court soon, involving the alleged extortion of 50 million taka from another businessman during her term in office. Hasina also denies that charge.
Another detained former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia is being held in another house in the same compound, and she too is likely to face trial on graft charges soon.
The two women are bitter rivals, alternating as leader of the impoverished South Asian country for 15 years until October 2006. They are said not to have spoken to each other for a decade.
The so-called “Battling Begums” would be expected to play key roles in the election that the country’s army-backed interim government has vowed to hold before the end of the year. But if convicted they would be barred from the race, legal experts say.
