DHAKA: A Bangladesh court jailed 50 opposition activists on Thursday for up to 10 years for an attack on the current prime minister’s motorcade nearly two decades ago, a prosecutor said.

Among the defendants was a former member of parliament for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which was in power at the time of the attack.

In 2002, a motorcade accompanying Sheikh Hasina, who was then the opposition leader for Awami League, was attacked with rocks, batons and machetes, prosecutors said.

“Three men including the ex-MP were given 10 years in jail and the rest got various jail terms from four-and-a-half years,” prosecutor Shaheen Mirdha told AFP, after the sentences were delivered by a district court in the southern city of Satkhira.

Twelve of the convicts are currently on the run.

The prosecutor said the attack was one of many assassination attempts on Hasina, who was unhurt.

Several of her Awami League followers and journalists were injured in the incident.

Thursday’s verdict was handed down as another court sentenced the country’s acting main opposition leader Tarique Rahman, also of the BNP, to two years in prison for defaming Hasina’s father, a court official said.

BNP spokesman Rizvi Ahmed slammed both the cases, saying they were “fabricated, manipulated and politically motivated”.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2021