Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday said Khandaker Abdur Rashid and Shariful Haque Dalim, two of the people involved in the killing of Bangabandhu, had returned to Bangladesh to kill her and her party’s leadership and were helped by Khaleda Zia to flee the country after the grenade attack on August 21, 2004.
Sheikh Hasina, who is also president of the ruling Awami League, was speaking at an event arranged to mark the 18th anniversary of the grenade attack on an anti-terrorism rally of the party on Bangabandhu Avenue in Dhaka.
The prime minister said the BNP-Jamaat government had patronized the attack in a bid to kill her and wipe out the top leadership of the Awami League. That kind of attack could not have taken place without any help from the government, UNB quoted her as saying.
Rashid and Dalim had also been involved in the plot to kill her, she said.
Then-prime minister Khaleda Zia helped the two flee the country after the attack, Sheikh Hasina added. “Many know that Dalim and Rashid were in Dhaka. I do not know whether everyone is aware of this or not.”
They fled the country when they found out that the attack had not killed her, Sheikh Hasina said.
The BNP-Jamaat coalition had tried to make Bangladesh a failed state by supporting militants and terrorists whenever it came to power, the prime minister said. “On October 1, 2001, [they] came to power through a rigged election and established a reign of terror across the country. [They] tried to turn [Bangladesh] into a militant state through one bomb and grenade attack after another.”
In continuation of this, they launched a grenade attack on an anti-terrorism rally of the Awami League, then the main opposition party, on August 21, 2004, she added.
Twenty-four people, including then-president of Awami Mohila League and the late president Zillur Rahman's wife Ivy Rahman were killed in the attack on August 21, 2004.
Over 500 others suffered splinter wounds in the attack and many of them were disabled for life.
The attack was carried out on an anti-terrorism rally of the Awami League on Bangabandhu Avenue in Dhaka.
Sheikh Hasina narrowly escaped fatal injury in the attack. However, her hearing was impaired by the impact of the repeated grenade blasts that occurred near the truck-dais at the huge public rally.
