From rxpgnews.com
Jail for Bangladesh's ex-dictator Ershad, blow to poll plans
By RxPG News Service,
Dec 15, 2006 - 7:43:31 PM
Dhaka, Dec 15 - A two-year jail verdict for former Bangladesh dictator Hussain Muhammad Ershad on charges of corruption could hurt his political plans, coming as it does just five weeks before the general elections.
Making peace with his detractors, Ershad, Bangladesh's longest-serving ruler -, was about to join the Awami League-led political alliance. He blamed rejection of his appeal by the Dhaka High Court Thursday to his lawyers not being fully heard and to 'politics'.
Awami League leader, former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, blamed the verdict to the judgment being 'influenced by remote control', ostensibly a reference to her rival Khaleda Zia, who ruled for the last five years and is alleged to retain clout among much of the bureaucracy and judiciary.
The high court dismissed Ershad's appeal against a lower court verdict awarding him three years, but reduced the sentence to two years.
In a case instituted soon after he was removed from power in 1991 and a trial that has continued since 1995, Ershad has been convicted of having made 300 million takas - in the purchase of speedboats from Japan when he held office.
The only option, reports said Friday, was to appeal to the Supreme Court, a process that could take time.
Ershad, now 77, has won past three elections, even during five years of imprisonment following conviction in other corruption trials. His Jatiya Party had 14 lawmakers in the eighth Jatiya Sangsad - and was hoping to get a share of seats in the Hasina-led alliance, gaining in the process a measure of political respectability.
Going back to jail could affect his contesting and campaigning, media reports said.
Ershad changed his political plans after hobnobbing with the Zia-led alliance, then in power, earlier this year.
Linking the verdict to politics, The Daily Star said on Friday: 'Interestingly, the - military dictator had been cleared of charges in four cases after he expressed his willingness to join the four-party alliance at a meeting with BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Tarique Rahman and the then state minister for home affairs Lutfozzaman Babar in August this year.'
'But when he backtracked, Ershad was threatened over the telephone that he would be sent to jail if he does not join the alliance,' the newspaper said, quoting unnamed Jatiya Party sources.
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