Khaleda should also face trial for making war criminals ministers, Hasina says

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia should be brought to justice for sharing power with war criminals, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has suggested.

"It's our misfortune that she put the national flag, stained with the blood of hundreds of thousands of martyrs, in the hands of those Razakars," she said at a discussion in Dhaka on Tuesday.

"She had also made them ministers. Those Khaleda Zia had made ministers have been hanged as war criminals."

"So, the people want to see as well what will be the punishment for her? The people should also think about it. 

The prime minister asked her Awami League supporters to build a strong public opinion for the trial of Khaleda and her husband late president Ziaur Rahman for making war criminals ministers.

"They need to be tried in public," Hasina said, addressing the discussion organised by Awami League's Dhaka north and south city units.

Khaleda became prime minister after her party’s coalition with Jamaat-e-Islami won the 2001 elections. She had made Motiur Rahman Nizami and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid industries minister and social welfare minister respectively.

The two top leaders of Jamaat, the party that opposed Bangladesh's independence during the Liberation War, have been hanged for the war-time genocide.    

Apart from them, Jamaat leaders Abdul Quader Molla and Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, and BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury have been executed for atrocities during the war.

The hanging of Jamaat financer Mir Quasem Ali is imminent after the Supreme Court rejected his petition to review the death sentence on Tuesday morning.