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Published : 02 Dec 2025, 12:45 AM
Tulip Siddiq has described her two-year corruption sentence in Bangladesh as the outcome of what she calls a “personal vendetta” by interim prime minister Muhammad Yunus.
The MP for Hampstead and Highgate in London told Sky News on Monday that the entire process felt like “a complete kangaroo court… shambolic, a complete farce”.
She said she was “baffled” that the Bangladeshi authorities had made no contact with her, even though allegations had been circulating for over a year and a half one and a half years.
Tulip, who previously served as the UK’s anti-corruption minister, said she hired lawyers in Britain who “repeatedly” wrote to Bangladeshi officials.
“They haven’t responded,” she said. She added that she later tried to appoint a lawyer in Bangladesh, but “they intimidated him and threatened him and he withdrew”.
She referred to a letter she wrote to Yunus during his visit to London in June. “I said to him ‘Let’s sit down. Let’s have a coffee and talk about what I’ve done wrong.’ He declined to meet me.”
According to the case, Tulip influenced her aunt Sheikh Hasina to help her mother Sheikh Rehana obtain a 669-sqm plot in Dhaka’s Purbachal.
The charges say Rehana secured the plot by hiding the fact that she already had a residence in Dhaka, and that Hasina “abused her power” to help her sister receive the allocation.
The case also claims Tulip “influenced” Hasina to assist her mother in obtaining the land.
Tulip rejected the accusation. “My aunt is twice as old as me and 10 times more powerful than me. I want to see the evidence of how I influenced the prime minister,” she said.
“They also spread various allegations before they settled on this one. And this one is, I think, deliberately vague about me exerting political influence. And I really want to see the evidence.”
The 43-year-old politician, who has been an MP since 2015, said no summons, chargesheet or correspondence was ever sent to her.
“I’m a parliamentarian. All they had to do is send some papers to the House of Commons. I feel like I’m in some sort of Kafkaesque nightmare,” she said.
Tulip cited support from senior UK legal figures such as Dominic Grieve, Robert Buckland and David Gauke, saying they viewed the trial as “contrived and flawed”.
“They’re not even of my political persuasion, but they’ve said this is unfair,” she told Sky News.
Addressing Yunus directly, she said: “He should be ashamed of himself. He is relentlessly pursuing a personal vendetta, trying to smear my reputation and drag a democratically elected British MP into the dirty politics of Bangladesh.”
Asked whether she would consider resigning from parliament, Tulip said the party had already dismissed the ruling. “The Labour Party has said they do not recognise the verdict because it’s a flawed process. So I will not be considering my position.”
She added that her wider family had also been targeted. “A few weeks ago my aunt was sentenced to death. From what I can see, the judicial system in Bangladesh seems to have completely collapsed.”
Tulip said she had been labelled a fugitive despite attending UK Parliament daily.
“If you really want to contact me, all you have to do is send me a letter to the House of Commons,” she said.
