Bangladesh Opposition Leader Goes on Trial for Graft
Bangladesh's main opposition leader Khaleda Zia went on trial Monday charged with embezzling $650,000 in two corruption cases that could see her jailed for life if found guilty.
Lead prosecutor Mosharraf Hossain said the anti-corruption court opened Zia's trial after rejecting a request for a further delay by lawyers for the leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), who twice served as prime minister.
Zia was excused from personally attending the hearing on security grounds.
"After so many delays we've finally been able to start the trial today," Hossain told reporters after the hearing got under way at a makeshift court set up near Dhaka's old Mughal-era quarter.
"The case has already been delayed 40 times since the court accepted the charges against her years ago," he said.
Zia and three of her aides are accused of siphoning off 31.5 million taka (about $400,000) from a charitable trust named after her late husband Ziaur Rahman, a former president who was assassinated in 1981.
She is also accused of leading a group of five people, including her eldest son and her heir apparent, in embezzling 21.5 million taka ($277,000) -- funds which were meant to go to an orphanage set up in memory of her late husband.
The trial was adjourned until October 13 after the first prosecution witness, an official with the country's anti-corruption agency, began giving evidence.
Prosecutors have said the former premier, who also faces several other charges, could be jailed for life if found guilty.
Zia, 69, has called the embezzlement charges politically motivated and said they are aimed at destroying the BNP, which has vowed to topple the government of her arch rival Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The opposition leader was charged just weeks after Hasina was re-elected in a January 5 general election which the center-right BNP and its 18 opposition allies boycotted and denounced as a farce.
The charges date back to Zia's last term as premier from 2001-2006 and can carry a life sentence, prosecutors have said.
Zia, who first became premier in 1991, has a notoriously poisonous relationship with Hasina -- an enmity which dates back three decades.
The January polls effectively became a one-horse race after the BNP and other opposition parties refused to field candidates over rigging fears.
Nearly 200 people died in political violence surrounding the election as the opposition and security forces fought pitched battles.
On Monday Zia's lawyers said they had sought a further postponement on security grounds due to a nationwide strike called by the BNP and its 19 allies including the Islamists.
"But the judge rejected our appeals and started the hearings in her absence," Zia's lawyer Masud Talukder told reporters.
He said Zia had pressed a "no-confidence" appeal against the judge and would ask a higher court to transfer the case to another court.
"We believe our clients won't get justice here. The court seems to be helpless due to unknown pressures and started the trial," Talukder added.
Last week Bangladesh's highest court cleared the way for the start of the trial after dismissing two of Zia's appeals seeking to have the cases suspended.
Earlier the high court had rejected similar appeals by Zia, prompting her lawyers to move to the highest court in a last-ditch attempt to stop the trials.
Source: Agence France Presse
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