Leader of the Opposition Sheikh Hasina yesterday said the government refused to take international help to probe grenade attacks on an Awami Legue (AL) rally on Saturday as 'it would expose their real character to all'. Hasina, also the president of main opposition Awami League, made the comment when she went to the house of Ivy Rahman, women's affairs secretary of her party, to pay her last respect to her. Ivy died from her wounds at the Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka early Tuesday fighting for her life for three days after suffering fatal injuries in Saturday's grenade attack on the AL rally on Bangabandhu Avenue. With tears rolling down her cheeks, Hasina said Ivy was like one of her family as their girlhood relations consolidated by the years. "Her killing by grenade, a battlefield weapon, was violence at its worst," she said.
Holding the 'Khaleda-Nizami administration responsible for the bloodbath' she alleged the government did not arrest anybody after the attack that killed 19 people, including Ivy, and injured over 200 others. "So many agencies of the government were deployed at the rally that day, but they could not arrest anyone. It proves that the government itself let loose the assailants and did not arrest anybody willingly," she alleged. Hasina accused the government of trying to kill her and all top leaders of her party in an attempt to cling to power as people lost their confidence in the Khaleda administration for its misrule and repression. On the government claim that it strengthened her security in the wake of the attack, Hasina said she read it in the newspapers, but saw nothing. About a fresh threat by Hikmatul Zihad to assassinate her in a week, Hasina said such threats were nothing new to her. "The killers have long been threatening me with death and made a brash attempt on Saturday," she said. Pegging the government as shameless, she said it was beyond her imagination that police would club her party leaders and activists, including women, in the wake of the rally attacks. "Will the families of the dead and the injured will get justice?" she asked. |