B'desh former premier freed from prison

Dhaka, Sept 11 (PTI) Former Bangladesh Prime Minister
Khaleda Zia was released from prison on bail Thursday after
being detained for a year on graft charges.

Zia, the Chairperson of Bangladesh Nationalist Party
(BNP) who faces graft charges in four cases, walked free after
a year from a makeshift jail at parliament premises after
apparently striking a deal with the military-backed interim
government.

Soon after her release, Zia announced that the BNP would
contest and win elections due in December.

All legal impediments to her release were removed with
the HC granting her three months' ad-interim bail in her last
two graft cases on Tuesday and necessary papers for her
release were submitted to the jail authorities last night.

Zia, 63, first went to meet Tarique at a city hospital
and stayed in his cabin for about one and a-half hour, flanked
by daughter-in-law Zubaida Rahman and granddaughter Zaima
Rahman along with BNP secretary general Khandaker Delwar
Hossain and other senior leaders.

Tarique, who faces charges in 13 cases was arrested on
March 7 last year and released on bail last week. He will
leave the country any time soon for treatment abroad.

Zia then visited her husband and former President Ziaur
Rahman's grave before driving to party headquarters from where
she will head to her Shaheed Mainul Road residence in the
Cantonment area, party sources said.

Hundreds of leaders and activists including senior party
leaders chanted slogans, while some released pigeons and
balloons to celebrate their party chief's release.

Khaleda and her younger son Arafat Rahman Koko were
arrested on September 3 last year and a Dhaka court sent her
to a sub-jail a couple of hours later. Koko, who was released
on July 17 through a government executive order, left for
Singapore on July 19 for treatment.