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| Bangladesh |
| Khaleda shows her back |
| 2007-04-17 |
| After a prolonged suspense, former prime minister and BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia finally agreed to leave the country under tremendous pressure from the military backed caretaker government and on condition that her sons will also be allowed to join her. "Her younger son Arafat Rahman will be going with her and the elder son Trique Rahman will join them later on," a highly placed source in the government told The Daily Star last night on condition of anonymity. "She will be leaving the country for Saudi Arabia in a couple of days. Initially she will be leaving with a one-month visa to perform umrah and her permanent residence there will be finalised upon reaching the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," the source said. "Everything has been finalised...now only the formalities including getting a visa remain to be completed, which might be completed in a day," the source added. Replying to a question, he said Arafat Rahman was not shown arrested officially because a process was on to persuade Khaleda to leave the country. "She was determined not to leave the country, but finally agreed when her family members including her younger brother Major (retd) Syeed Iskandar persuaded her to agree to leave yesterday evening." The decision to produce Arafat Rahman before a court last evening was dropped after Khaleda Zia had agreed to leave the country. Arafat was picked up by the joint forces late night on Sunday. It was learnt that Arafat was taken to his mother's Moinul Hossain Road residence in Dhaka Cantonment immediately after Khaleda agreed to leave the country last evening. Later at night he was reportedly released. He was taken away by the joint forces from the same house on Sunday. Khaleda, however, bargained for Trique Rahman's release and asked the authorities concerned to allow him to go with her, but the authorities told her that he might be sent to Saudi Arabia very soon for 'treatment'. |
| Posted by:Fred |