Bangladeshi police on Wednesday arrested former Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal, days after his predecessor was detained over alleged election fraud through the tenure of the Sheikh Hasina administration.
Awal, who oversaw the January 2024 nationwide election, was taken into custody by the detective department within the capital Dhaka, assistant commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, Jahangir Kabir, informed Anadolu.
Kabir stated particulars of the case in opposition to Awal will likely be made public quickly. He added that one other former chief election commissioner, KM Nurul Huda, was arrested earlier this week as a part of the identical case, which names 24 people, together with each ex-election officers.
The arrests comply with rising calls for for accountability after years of disputed nationwide elections held below the Hasina authorities. Both Awal and Huda served as chief election commissioners through the 2024 and 2018 parliamentary votes, respectively.
Those elections have been extensively criticized at residence and overseas over allegations of voting irregularities and lack of truthful political competitors.
Major opposition events, together with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, boycotted the January 2024 vote, calling it a “dummy election.” They accused ruling Awami League members of contesting as impartial candidates to create the looks of broad participation.
The position of election officers has come below renewed scrutiny since a political changeover in August final yr that led to the ousting of the Hasina administration following mass protests.
On Sunday, the BNP filed authorized complaints in opposition to 24 former officers, together with three ex-election commissioners and Hasina, accusing them of manipulating nationwide polls since 2014. That night time, BNP supporters detained Huda, publicly assaulted him, and handed him over to police.
The BNP additionally submitted case paperwork to the present Election Commission, demanding authorized motion in opposition to former officers for allegedly ignoring opposition complaints of election misconduct over the previous decade.
Source: www.anews.com.tr