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Bangladesh Arrests Key Opposition Leaders
[An Nahar] Bangladesh has launched a crackdown on the main opposition, arresting big shots after their party called a nationwide strike to force Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums.. to resign and call elections under a caretaker government. Police said three top Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders, including an ex-deputy prime minister, were incarcerated Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! late Friday and two key aides of main opposition leader  Khaleda ZiaThree-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ... including a leading businessman were taken into custody early Saturday. "The five have been accused of inciting violence, exploding bombs and obstructing officers in keeping law and order," Dhaka deputy police commissioner Anisur Rahman told AFP. BNP bigwig Shamsuzzaman Dudu said at least 1,000 of the party's supporters and officials in rural districts had also been arrested in a nationwide crackdown since Friday night. Police were not immediately available to comment on the arrest in the rural areas. The clampdown came hours after the BNP and its Islamist allies called a three-day strike -- its third three-day-long shutdown in as many weeks. The strike, due to start Sunday, is part of a new wave of protests it launched on October 25 to force Hasina to resign and make way for a technocrat-led government to organize January polls. Posted by: Fred 2013-11-10 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=379363 |