All is not well in Labour party at present. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has spent the morning defending his Chancellor Rachel Reeves and her autumn Budget, cabinet ministers are complaining to journalists that they were kept in the dark over the state of the nation’s finances and a group of Scottish Labour MPs are plotting to oust Starmer. But the PM’s top team aren’t the only people under fire today: Labour MP Tulip Siddiq has been sentenced to two years in jail in Bangladesh over corruption claims linked to her aunt Sheikh Hasina. Crikey!
The niece of Bangladesh’s onetime authoritarian premier was tried in abstentia and found guilty of corruption charges. It comes after Siddiq had an arrest warrant issued against her in Bangladesh in April. In one of at least three investigations against the Hampstead politician, Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has accused Siddiq of putting pressure on her aunt to give plots of land in a Dhaka residential development to three of the parliamentarian’s family members. For her part, the Hampstead and Highgate MP has denied all wrongdoing, remarking:
The whole process has been flawed and farcical from the beginning to the end. The outcome of this kangaroo court is as predictable as it is unjustified. I hope this so-called ‘verdict’ will be treated with the contempt it deserves. My focus has always been my constituents in Hampstead and Highgate and I refuse to be distracted by the dirty politics of Bangladesh.
The sentencing of Siddiq follows that of Hasina, who was tried for crimes against humanity in abstentia last month. The former Bangladeshi leader was ousted from the top job in August last year after a brutal crackdown on student demonstrations saw 1,400 protestors killed by security forces. Hasina has been sentenced to death but is currently living in exile in India. Meanwhile Siddiq was forced to resign as the Labour government’s ‘anti-corruption’ minister after an official probe found her links to Hasina exposed Starmer’s lot to ‘reputational risks’. The Labour MP has described herself as ‘collateral damage’ in a ‘feud between Muhammad Yunus [Bangladesh’s chief adviser] and my aunt’.
The Labour party remarked after the sentencing that:
As has been reported, highly regarded senior legal professionals have highlighted that Tulip Siddiq has not had access to a fair legal process in this case and has never been informed of the details of the charges against her despite repeated requests made to the Bangladeshi authorities through her legal team. Anyone facing any charge should always be afforded the right to make legal representations when allegations are made against them. Given that has not happened in this case, we cannot recognise this judgment.
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