Hasina’s passport application “utterly ridiculous”, says state minister for foreign affairs
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humayun Kabir has described as utterly ridiculous the application by ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, now in India, for a new passport and national identity card (NID).
He said Bangladesh does not give a passport to a terrorist. Rather, it wants to bring them back under the extradition treaty and carry out their sentence.
The state minister said this on Monday (9 November) while answering journalists’ questions at the Foreign Ministry. He was asked about the news that an application for Hasina’s passport and NID had been made to the Bangladesh mission in Delhi through a British law firm, Matrix Chambers.
Meanwhile, the Delhi High Commission is reported to have received the email seeking a new passport for Sheikh Hasina.
Sharply criticising the British law firm’s moral position, he said any law firm ought to know who its client really is. Their client is a person who killed more than 1,500 people and fled Bangladesh.
He added that the person had carried out extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in the country for years.
Addressing the law firm, the state minister said that instead of chasing blood-stained money looted from the Bangladeshi people, it should observe some moral and professional limits.
He said such unethical representation of a fugitive terrorist would embarrass the firm itself on the international stage.
On Hasina’s return to the country, Humayun Kabir said she had fled, and there was now no scope for the drama of returning with a new passport. If she really wants to return, there is a specific legal process for it.
He said there is an extradition treaty between Bangladesh and India. She should ask the Indian government to hand her over to Bangladesh under that treaty, so that she can come, surrender before the court and serve her sentence.
On the lobbying in London by the Awami League, whose activities are banned, he said that of more than 350 members of the British Parliament, only five or six had been misled with false information. Later, when a public relations firm’s wrong information was proven, those concerned were left in an extremely embarrassing situation.
The state minister said no ordinary passport application would work for fugitive criminals. Through legal and diplomatic processes, and under the prisoner-exchange treaty, Sheikh Hasina will be brought back to the country and made to face trial.
