{"id":8199,"date":"2018-05-16T09:00:16","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T08:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/?p=8199"},"modified":"2018-05-16T09:49:55","modified_gmt":"2018-05-16T08:49:55","slug":"bangladesh-court-orders-release-of-opposition-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/bangladesh-court-orders-release-of-opposition-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangladesh court orders release of opposition leader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7347\" src=\"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Khaleda-Zia.jpg\" alt=\"Khaleda Zia\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" \/>Bangladesh\u2019s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release from detention of 72-year-old opposition leader Khaleda Zia after her lawyers argued she was unwell.<br \/>\nIn a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court\u2019s decision to grant\u00a0Khaleda Zia bail while she appeals against a five-year jail term imposed in February for corruption, her lawyer Joynal Abedin said.<br \/>\nKhaleda Zia\u2019s lawyers said they told the court that the three-time former prime minister, the arch-rival of current leader Sheikh Hasina, faced serious health risks if kept in prison.<br \/>\nKhaleda Zia underwent a hospital check-up last month.<br \/>\nThe Supreme Court had earlier suspended the lower court\u2019s decision to grant Zia bail, prompting her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to condemn the move as part of a campaign by Hasina to silence the opposition ahead of a looming national election.<br \/>\nIt was not immediately clear, however, when Zia would be released from the special prison in Dhaka where she is the only inmate.<br \/>\nAbedin said Zia was officially considered under arrest in five other cases and she needs to get bail for each one, which may take days or weeks.<br \/>\n\u201cWe hope she will be released shortly,\u201d Abedin said.<br \/>\nZia also faces dozens of separate charges related to violence and corruption.<br \/>\nThe BNP leader was jailed for five years in February on charges of embezzling money intended for an orphanage.<br \/>\nZia, who entered politics in the 1980s after her military dictator husband was assassinated in a failed coup, has consistently dismissed the charges as politically motivated.<br \/>\nHer party boycotted a 2014 national election in which Hasina was re-elected but is expected to contest the new polls due in December.<\/p>\n<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\r\n<script>(function(d, s, id) {\r\n  var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\r\n  if (d.getElementById(id)) return;\r\n  js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;\r\n  js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_GB\/all.js#xfbml=1\";\r\n  fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\r\n}(document, \"script\", \"facebook-jssdk\"));<\/script>\r\n <fb:comments href=\"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/bangladesh-court-orders-release-of-opposition-leader\/\" font=\"arial\" num_posts=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" colorscheme=\"light\"  style=\"background:#FFFFFF;padding-top:0px;\r\npadding-right:0px;\r\npadding-bottom:0px;\r\npadding-left:0px;\r\nmargin-top:0px;\r\nmargin-right:0px;\r\nmargin-bottom:0px;\r\nmargin-left:0px;\r\n\"><\/fb:comments>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bangladesh\u2019s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release from detention of 72-year-old opposition leader Khaleda Zia after her lawyers argued she was unwell. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court\u2019s decision to grant\u00a0Khaleda Zia bail while she appeals against a five-year jail term imposed in February for corruption, her lawyer Joynal &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,1],"tags":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8200,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8199\/revisions\/8200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}