The order for Zia’s launch comes hours after her archrival Sheikh Hasina resigned as prime minister and fled Bangladesh.
Bangladesh’s President Mohammed Shahabuddin has ordered the discharge of jailed former prime minister and key opposition chief Khaleda Zia, hours after her archrival Sheikh Hasina was ousted and fled the nation.
The president’s press group mentioned in a press release on Monday {that a} assembly led by Shahabuddin had “determined unanimously to free Bangladesh Nationalist Occasion (BNP) chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia instantly”.
Military chief Common Waker-Uz-Zaman, together with the pinnacle of the navy and air power, and prime leaders of a number of opposition events, together with the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami social gathering, attended the president’s assembly.
Zia, 78 and twice the prime minister of Bangladesh, is ill and confined to hospital after she was sentenced to 17 years in jail for corruption in 2018.
She shares a long-standing rivalry with Hasina, and was accused of misusing her energy by embezzling some $250,000 in donations meant for an orphanage belief.
The BNP has mentioned the instances had been fabricated and geared toward retaining Zia away from politics, allegations denied by Hasina’s authorities.
“The assembly has additionally determined to free all of the individuals who have been arrested in the course of the scholar protests,” the president’s assertion added.
Greater than 2,000 folks had been arrested since final month throughout lethal road protests over a authorities job quota that quickly reworked right into a nationwide name for Hasina to stop workplace.
Almost 300 folks had been killed in weeks of protests that the authorities sought to crush. An evening of lethal violence on Sunday killed near 100 and a curfew to quash protests was referred to as.
Earlier on Monday, Common Waker-Uz-Zaman mentioned an interim authorities can be shaped and the deaths in the middle of the weeks-long protests can be investigated.
“I promise you all we’ll convey justice to all of the murders and injustice. We request you to place confidence in the military of the nation. I take full duty, and I guarantee you to not get disheartened,” the final mentioned.
The navy additionally mentioned it will carry the curfew at daybreak on Tuesday and open places of work, factories, colleges, and faculties from 6am on Tuesday (00:00 GMT).
Reporting from Dhaka, Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury mentioned that regardless of the violence, arrests and curfew, folks on the streets had been jubilant over Hasina’s exit.
“Only a few minutes in the past, a military patrol instructed protesters to go house, that the military was with them and that they need to let the roads clear. They had been saying the protesters had been all protected and to not fear. However individuals are nonetheless planning to remain on the streets although it’s not as crowded,” he mentioned.
Chowdhury added that what occurs subsequent within the nation “is determined by how the interim authorities is shaped, who its members are and the way acceptable they’re to the general public”.
The navy has a “very robust job forward,” Irene Khan, a UN particular rapporteur, instructed Al Jazeera.
“We’re all hoping that the transition can be peaceable and that there will likely be accountability for all of the human rights violations which have taken place.”
