The arrest of a former Bangladesh prime minister sparked harsh media criticism of the country's military-backed government yesterday, including warnings the move could backfire against the authorities.
Sheikh Hasina, prime minister for the five years through 2001 and accused of corruption during her rule, was taken from her home in Dhaka and sent to jail by a city court on Monday as her followers protested.
The protests were spontaneous but short-lived, as the country is now under emergency rule imposed by the interim government that took over in January following deadly clashes between supporters of Hasina and her rival, Begum Khaleda Zia.
Khaleda was twice prime minister and heads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Hasina leads the Awami League, the country's other major party.
While the public protests quickly faded under rules barring normal political activity, the arrest brought strong condemnations on Tuesday from some newspapers and commentators.
The Daily Star, Bangladesh's top English-language daily, called Hasina's detention a "wrong and unacceptable decision."
"Politics enters a heightened state of tension and confrontation with the arrest ... The government must now explain, to the satisfaction of the public, why the Awami League chief needed to be detained," the Star said in an editorial comment.
The arrest "sends out all the wrong signals about the nation's democratic political future," it added.
The interim government has said it wants to clean up politics from corruption, put in place a purer form of democracy, and make Bangladesh a true welfare state governed by honest politicians.
It and others have levelled corruption accusations against Khaleda as well as Hasina, and the authorities had already effectively restricted movements by the two women, who deny any wrongdoing and say the charges are politically motivated.
The government has detained more than 170 key political figures in an anti-corruption drive, including Khaleda's son, Tareque Rahman.
The arrest of Hasina raised the possibility Khaleda might also find herself behind bars soon, boosting speculation the interim authority was eager to effectively remove the two from politics as it prepares to hold an election late next year.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.