PM Hasina: Tarique Rahman to be brought back by any means

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last night expressed her firm resolve to take back BNP acting chairperson Tarique Rahman from London by any means and bring him under the ambit of law. “We will bring him back to the country by any means Inshallah, and put him under trial,” she said. The prime minister was speaking at a reception accorded to her marking the graduation of Bangladesh to a developing country from a least developed one. Sheikh Hasina said she has already talked to the British government in this connection. “[I told them] he is a convicted criminal, how he's staying here. So, return him quickly,” she said. The prime minister also mentioned that the government is continuing its process to bring him back. Turning to the recent attack on Bangladesh High Commission in London where the attackers vandalized the portrait of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, she said: “This is our high commission, we have a mission here because Bangladesh attained Independence. These culprits insulted the pictures of the Father of the Nation storming into the commission...let me ask, where did they get the courage?" Hasina said. Coming down heavily on the officials who were in the high commission at that time for their inaction when the culprits were vandalizing it, the prime minister asked, “Why could not they take any step to do something against the vandalizing? This is my big question.” Hasina urged expatriate Bangladeshis in the UK to give a befitting reply to this heinous ransacking in the Bangladesh High Commission. Branding Ziaur Rahman, Khaleda Zia and Tarique Rahman as killers, Hasina said the country has to be saved from these killers. She also said that Tarique is continuing his terrorist acts living in London like what he did in Bangladesh.