Bangladesh News

BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Tarique Rahman, his wife Zubaida Rahman and their daughter Jaima Rahman obtained German visas yesterday. Earlier they received British visas.

According to relatives, they were ready to board a Singapore-bound flight scheduled to leave Zia International Airport (ZIA) around midnight. But their departure could not be confirmed as of 11:00pm yesterday.

“They [Tarique and his family] are leaving tonight,” a close relative of Tarique told The Daily Star. The relative declined to elaborate.

But an official of Singapore Airlines in Dhaka refused to confirm or deny that Tarique was on their passengers list. “I cannot say, even if I knew, whether the person [Tarique] is travelling with us,” he said.

Kazi Mazharul Islam Dolan, Tarique’s doctor, is expected to accompany the family on their trip abroad.

Journalists and activists of BNP and its front organisations started gathering in front of Block-D of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) Hospital assuming that Tarique would leave the country.

However, Ahmed Azam, Tarique’s lawyer, told journalists at the hospital around 9:00pm that he was not sure if the BNP leader would leave the country that night.

BNP leaders claimed that before leaving the country, Tarique will meet his mother, BNP chief Khaleda Zia, and visit the grave of his father, slain president Ziaur Rahman.

After 18 months of detention, Tarique was released on bail on September 3. Tarique has been staying at the BSMMU Hospital since his release.

Army-led joint forces arrested him at his mother’s cantonment home on March 7, 2007.

Meanwhile, BNP policymakers are worried over BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia’s probable release before Tarique’s departure from the country.

Khaleda, accused in four graft cases and now detained in a makeshift prison on the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban premises, was yesterday granted three months’ bail in the Gatco and Niko corruption cases.

Earlier she obtained bail in two other corruption cases–the “Zia Orphanage Trust” fund embezzlement case and the Barapukuria Coalmine scam case.

Since she obtained bail in all four cases, legal barriers to her release have been cleared.

Tarique, who emerged as the most influential leader during the BNP-Jamaat led coalition regime between 2001 and 2006, is expected to stay abroad for a long period. He will not be in the country during the parliamentary elections scheduled for the third week of December.

Believed to be the political heir of the Zia family, Tarique’s release and his departure for treatment overseas is seen as a crucial turn of events in the country’s political arena.

Tarique’s younger brother Arafat Rahman Koko was released by an executive order on July 17 and he is now undergoing treatment at a hospital in Bangkok. Koko was arrested along with his mother September 3 last year.