Bangladesh's former prime minister Khaleda Zia's son charged for grenade attack

Bangladeshi prosecutors have charged the eldest son of ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia over a 2004 grenade attack that killed 20 people and injured current prime minister Sheikh Hasina, Zia’s long-time rival.

(Photos : Reuters)

Tareque Rahman, 46 and now living in London, has been indicted for abetting the attack, the country's worst political violence in decades which severely injured one of Hasina's ears, state prosecutor Syed Rezaur Rahman said.

"We have pressed charges against Tareque and 29 others including a former political secretary of Zia, an ex-home minister, a leader of the country's top Islamist party and a Kashmiri militant," Rahman told the AFP news agency.

He claims that the perpetrators met at Tareque Zia’s office and that he “assured them all kinds of help for the attack”.

“The aim was to kill Hasina," Rahman said.

Hasina’s Awami League was the main opposition party at the time and Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) was in government.

Hasina was addressing a rally in central Dhaka when the grenades went off, leaving at least 20 people dead including the wife of the country's current president.

The banned Islamist Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) was initially blamed for the attack and investigators have already pressed charges against 22 including top HuJI officials.

Fifty-two people have now been charged over the incident, Rahman said, adding that half of them are in hiding including the main accused, Maolana Tajuddin, who is believed to have fled to Africa.

The case took a new turn in 2008 when police arrested former state minister for education, Abdus Salam Pintu, a brother of Tajuddin, and accused him of aiding and abetting the attackers.

Earlier this year a court sentenced Zia's younger son Arafat Rahman Koko to six years in prison for laundering nearly 700,000 euros through bank accounts in Singapore.