The interim government says former Prime Minister Hasina’s allegations of “terrorist activities” during the student protests are baseless.
Bangladesh’s interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has lifted a ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami party that had been imposed under an anti-terrorism law.
The Interior Ministry on Wednesday lifted the ban on the country’s largest Muslim party. The ban was imposed in the final days of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government. The party had accused its members of fomenting unrest during the student revolt that led to Hasina’s resignation.
An official statement from the transitional government said there was “no concrete evidence of involvement of Jamaat” and its member organizations “in terrorist activities.”
The party had rejected allegations that it had incited violence during protests in which students opposed a quota system for government jobs and condemned the ban as “illegal, extrajudicial and unconstitutional”.
Distraction from the raid
Jamaat-e-Islami, which has millions of followers, was banned from running in elections in 2013 after Supreme Court judges ruled that its charter violated the secular constitution of the Muslim-majority country of 170 million people.
The party was subsequently excluded from elections in 2014, 2018 and in January this year, when 76-year-old Hasina won her fifth term in largely discredited polls with no credible opposition.
Hasina’s government banned the party on August 1, just four days before she was removed from power after weeks of student protests and fled to India by helicopter.
Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, general secretary of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, had accused Hasina’s government of trying to divert attention from a crackdown by security forces in which the United Nations estimates more than 600 people were killed.
Shishir Monir, a lawyer for Jamaat-e-Islami, said the party would file a petition with the Supreme Court early next week to restore its registration with the Bangladesh Election Commission so that it could continue to contest elections.
Jamaat-e-Islami was founded in 1941 during British colonial rule and fought against the establishment of Bangladesh as an independent state during the War of Independence against Pakistan in 1971.
Most of the party’s leading politicians have been hanged or imprisoned since 2013. They were convicted of crimes against humanity in 1971, including murders, kidnappings and rapes.
Bangladesh gained independence on December 16, 1971 with the help of neighboring India.
