Khaleda Zia's son gets life for assassination attempt

While Hasina survived the attack with a partial hearing loss, her party's women front chief and former president Zillur Rahman's wife Ivy Rahman was killed in the blasts

Opposition BNP chief Khaleda Zia's fugitive son and political heir Tarique Rahman was sentenced to life and 19 others, including a former home minister, were given death penalty by a Bangladesh court Wednesday for their role in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2004.

An attack on an Awami League rally on August 21, 2004 targeted Hasina, the then opposition leader, when she was about to finish a speech in front of thousands of supporters. While Hasina survived the attack with a partial hearing loss, her party's women front chief and former president Zillur Rahman's wife Ivy Rahman was killed in the blasts.

Special court Judge Shahed Nuruddin awarded the death penalty to 19 people including former junior home minister Lutfuzzaman Babar, ex-deputy education minister Abdus Salam Pintu and several former army intelligence officers. Rahman and 18 others were sentenced to life. Eleven others were jailed for different terms.

Thirty-one of the 49 convicts were present in the court while others including 51-year-old Rahman, now the acting BNP chairman as his mother is serving a five-year imprisonment in a graft case, are on the run abroad to evade justice.

Rahman was tried in absentia with the court declaring him a "fugitive". He now lives in London where he is believed to have sought asylum though the British authorities have declined to reveal his immigration status. He leads the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) from exile after Zia was jailed in February. Zia was not made an accused in the case.

49
Total no. of convicts in the case

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