DHAKA: Bangladesh’s main opposition party said that three more of its senior leaders had been arrested, after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ruled out talks with adversaries demanding her resignation.
Hasina has been accused of ruling the South Asian nation with an iron fist and the United States has sanctioned some of its most senior police figures for widespread human rights violations. Hundreds of senior cadres and supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have been arrested, with former commerce minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury among those taken into custody overnight.
“Police arrested my dad from my aunt’s home in Gulshan at around midnight,” Chowdhury’s son Israfil Khosru said. The party also confirmed the arrests of BNP spokesman Zahir Uddin Swapan and Aminul Huq, a former national football captain and a Dhaka unit chief of the party. The latest arrests come just days after police detained Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, one of the BNP’s highest-ranked leaders.
Police have yet to comment on the latest arrests but said in an earlier statement that at least 2,113 people had been arrested over the past week on charges of violence during opposition protests. Hasina again ruled out any dialogue with the BNP in an address to parliament. “Who would ask for talks with these beasts?” she said, in a speech that also accused her adversary Zia’s son of hiring killers to murder her.