The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Detained former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia is learnt to have advised both of her daughter-in-laws-Dr Zubaida Rahman and Sharmily Rahman Shithy-to wait for a few days for her reply to their request for saving their respective husbands from facing possible trial in Nagar Bhaban and Gulisthan-Jatrabari Fly over scams through allowing them to submit petition for their conditional release on parole, informed sources said yesterday.

Dr Zubaida Rahman, the wife of her detained eldest son and political heir Tarique Rahman and Sharmily Rahman Shithy, the wife of her imprisoned and ailing youngest son Arafat Rahman Koko, recently made the plea meeting Begum Zia, also the BNP Chairperson, at her prison bungalow recently.

Dr Zubaidah and Sharmily also pleaded their mother-in-law to go abroad along with both of her sons, now undergoing treatment at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital, accepting the official parole conditions, which include a guarantee to refrain from calling anti-government campaign and returning the illegally amassed money that her eldest son Tarique Rahman, also the Senior Joint Secretary General of the BNP, laundered abroad.

Assuring her daughter-in-laws that she would actively consider their plea shortly, the BNP Chief, however, issued a statement to release her youngest son-Koko-for treatment abroad.

She made the statement through her lawyers, who met her recently.

Sources close to the leadership of the anti-reform faction of the BNP yesterday disclosed that a section of their leaders were trying to launch an anti-government movement within the shortest possible time unitedly with rightists forces, including some components of the previous four-party alliance and some pro-Islamic political parties, which might have infuse a more vigour in Begum Zia, who is termed by her followers as the 'uncompromising leader”.