Tarique has no valid passport, living with refugee status: London mission

BNP Senior Vice-Chairman Tarique Rahman, living in London for more than six years, does not have a ‘valid’ Bangladesh passport.

Sources both in Dhaka and London have confirmed bdnews24.com that he had the passport renewed in December 2008, a few days before the end of the then military-backed caretaker regime. 

It expired in 2013.

Since then, he has not turned up at the Bangladesh High Commission in London to renew the travel document, according to a report the mission sent back to the foreign ministry.

There had been speculations about Tarique’s travel document when he, contrary to initial media reports, did not travel to Malaysia to have a last glimpse of his younger brother Arafat Rahman Coco who died at a Kuala Lumpur hospital on Jan 24.

Sources privy to the mission report said Tarique did not have any Bangladeshi passport and that “probably he is staying with a British document”.

“That document gives him a refugee status,” a source said, “he cannot travel with that.”

However, sources in London told bdnews24.com that British authorities took the Tarique issue “seriously” after Bangladesh “repeatedly notified them he is engaged in political activities, though he came for taking medical treatment”.

Bangladesh also referred to the 1958 Refugee Convention that barred refugees to engage in political activities in the host country to make its case.

“The government is making every possible effort to bring him back,” a source said. The High Commission officials reported back to Dhaka after speaking with the British Foreign Office, Home Office, senior parliamentarians, and other relevant departments.

The elder son of BNP chief Khaleda Zia went to London in September 2008 after being released on parole for treatment.

He is facing a slew of corruption charges and has been named in the cases of Aug 21, 2004 grenade attack that killed dozens of ruling Awami League leaders and injured many including Sheikh Hasina, then the opposition leader.

The court is trying him in absentia and he has been declared a ‘fugitive’.

He, however, used to hit the headlines for controversial comments on Bangladesh’s history and founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

A court banned his statements or speeches being published in Bangladesh media and also their reproduction upon a plea on Jan 8 “as long as he is absconding from justice”.

The court also asked the foreign ministry to take measures to bring him back, following which Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali wrote to his British counterpart Philip Hammond.

The Bangladesh High Commission in London also wrote to the British Foreign Office.

The foreign minister has not heard from the Foreign Office but it briefed the Bangladesh mission in London on the issue.

It conveyed that as per the 1998 Data Protection Act, the UK government cannot divulge details of an individual without their expressed consent.

The High Commission officials, however, told Dhaka that in the last two months, Tarique was only seen at his younger brother’s Gayebana Janaza (absentia funeral).

He was never heard in the ethnic media in London, where a large number of Bangladesh community lives, in the last two months of blockades his party was enforcing back home.

The presumed political heir to Khaleda Zia last spoke on Jan 4, a day before his mother called for the unending blockade.

Sources privy to the matter told bdnews24.com they believed the British authorities gave him the message that ‘you cannot engage in political activities as you came here for treatment’ following those letters.

Foreign ministry officials told bdnews24.com that the British Foreign Office would formally reply to the minister’s letter “shortly”.