London Labour MP Tulip Siddiq has been sentenced to two years in prison in Bangladesh after being found guilty of corruption following a trial in her absence.
00:00How and why has the MP for Hampstead and Highgate been sentenced to two years in prison in Bangladesh?
00:06London Labour MP Tulip Sadiq, the niece of Bangladesh's ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina,
00:10has been found guilty of corruption over influencing her aunt to secure a plot of land for her family in the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka.
00:16In a ruling, the judge found ex-minister Sadiq guilty of misusing her special influence as a British politician
00:21to coerce Hasina into giving valuable pieces of land to her brother, her mother and sister.
00:26The trial was carried out in absentia, that means that neither Sheikh Hasina, Sadiq, her mother or more than a dozen other accused family members were in court.
00:34Due to their absence, they were denied access to defence lawyers and a lawyer that attempted to represent Sadiq and others
00:39alleged that she was threatened and placed under house arrest.
00:42Sadiq was also fined the equivalent of £620.
00:45So how was she put on trial there?
00:47In short, as a Bangladeshi citizen with a passport and an ID,
00:50even though she hadn't held a Bangladeshi passport since childhood and had never paid tax there.
00:54So will she serve the sentence?
00:56It's unlikely.
00:57The UK does not have an extradition treaty in place with Bangladesh,
01:00and Sadiq has strongly denied the charge, saying that she's the victim of a political smear
01:04and that much of the evidence was forged.
01:06She's previously said the charges were completely absurd and that she's collateral damage
01:10in the long-standing feud between her aunt and Bangladesh's interim leader, Mohamed Yunus.
01:15Sadiq's mother was also handed a seven-year sentence, and her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, was given five years.
01:19However, she was also handed a combined 21-year prison sentence in other corruption cases,
01:24and last month was sentenced to death over her government's violent crackdowns on demonstrators during protests.
01:29Following the verdict, a Labour Party spokesperson has said that it did not recognize the corruption judgment
01:34under the belief that Sadiq did not have access to a fair legal process.
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