BNP draws Ilias-Siddique parallel

BNP Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi has alleged that prominent environment lawyer Syeda Rizwana Hasan's husband Abu Bakar Siddique was abducted by the very people who had carried away BNP Organising Secretary M Ilias Ali.

He made the allegation at a press conference at the party’s Nayapaltan headquarters in the capital on Friday afternoon.

“The BNP firmly believes that those who were behind the disappearance of Ilias Ali had abducted Syeda Rizwana Hasan's husband. The nature of the two incidents is the same. The conspiracy is not only directed at the opposition party but also on the freedom of the people.”

File Photo

Rizvi added that Ilias Ali had been rendered traceless after his abduction, sending out a suggestive warning message to the opposition party.

He said Siddique’s abduction, too , was a warning message to those taking part in debates and talk-shows to uphold people’s freedom of speech, their fundamental rights, and to campaign against encroachers and criminals harming the environment.

Businessman Abu Bakar Siddique, husband of Executive Director of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers’ Association (BELA) Syeda Rizwana Hasan, was freed by the abductors 35 hours after his abduction on Thursday midnight.
But the abductors remained untraced and their motive could not be established till Friday afternoon.

Siddique was abducted by some unidentified men on his way back to home from Fatulla in Narayanganj.

Later, the kidnappers released him in released him at an Ansar Camp near Mirpur Bangla College in the capital on Thursday midnight.

Police rescued him from a CNG-run auto-rickshaw near Kalabagan area in the city.

BNP Organising Secretary Ilyas Ali and his car driver Ansar Ali were abducted from Banani in the capital on April 17, 2012. They remain untraced even two years after the incident.

The BNP has been claiming that Ilias had been made to disappear because of ‘political reasons’.