Joy says Bangladesh should ask Britain to extradite Tarique to Bangladesh

The UK has the option to extradite BNP leader Tarique Rahman to Bangladesh under a UN charter though the two countries do not have an official extradition treaty, Sajeeb Wazed Joy has said.

The prime minister’s ICT affairs adviser also thinks the government should ask the UK to extradite Tarique, sentenced to life in prison over the deadly Aug 21, 2004 grenade attack on an Awami League rally in Dhaka.

BNP Senior Vice Chairman Tarique has been living in the UK since 2008 and running the party from London now with his mother and party chief Khaleda Zia incarcerated for corruption since early this year.

He was earlier sentenced to seven years in jail for money laundering and 10 years for corruption in Zia Orphanage Trust.

After a Dhaka tribunal delivered the judgment in the grenade attack case on Wednesday, Joy, the son of the attack’s prime target Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, took to Facebook to share his thoughts.

“Today after 14 years we are getting justice for the grenade attack on my mother and the murder of many people I knew well, including Ivy Rahman.”

“Our Government should immediately issue a new Interpol Red Notice for Tarique Rahman, this time for murder and terrorism. We should also ask the UK to extradite him,” Joy said.

The UK recently extradited four ISIS terror suspects to the US even though they may face the death penalty, Joy pointed out.

“We don't have an official extradition treaty with the UK, but UN charter requires any member states to extradite or convict in their courts upon request,” he wrote.

Hasina, during her visit to the UK in April, vowed to bring Tarique back to make him face justice in Bangladesh. She said she had spoken to the British government and would have Tarique extradited ‘by any means’.

Asked whether her government took any initiative to bring Tarique back, she had said the UK should have faced the question instead. “…I don’t understand how UK enjoys keeping a convicted person. So it’s better you pose this question to the UK people," she said.

‘ADVANTAGE’

The ruling Awami League and some of the injured victims of the grenade attack are not happy with the grenade attack verdict as Tarique has dodged the hangman’s noose.

Pro-Awami League lawyer Barrister M Amir-Ul Islam, however, sees advantages in the life sentence for Tarique.

“Now the path has opened to bring him back to serve the terms,” he said, referring to the laws of the UK.

The British extradition laws require that the person, whose extradition is sought by his or her country, cannot face death penalty there.

Barrister Amir-Ul said Bangabandhu’s death row killers could not be brought back because of the existence of such laws in their host countries. 

He hoped the government would now take measures through the high commission in London to get Tarique back.

Barrister M Amir-Ul Islam

There has been, however, confusion over the status of Tarique in the UK.

The London mission said in March, 2015 that Tarique had not renewed his passport and “probably staying there with a British document which gives him a refugee status and bars him from travelling”.

In that case, the UK can refuse Bangladesh’s request for extradition of Tarique, if he is staying there as a “refugee within the meaning of the Refugee Convention”, according to the British law.

After Hasina’s London tour, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam said Tarique had surrendered his passport to the UK Home Office which indicates he had relinquished his Bangladesh citizenship.

The BNP responded to Shahriar’s claim and said Tarique submitted his passport to the UK Home Office to get political asylum, not to give up Bangladesh citizenship.

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