Bangladeshi officials testify against former British minister Siddiq in corruption trial
Siddiq, who is Hasina's niece, resigned from her post in Prime Minister Keir Starmer 's government in January following reports that she lived in London properties linked to her aunt and was named in an anti-corruption investigation in Bangladesh.
She is being tried together with her mother, Sheikh Rehana, brother Radwan Mujib and sister Azmina. Siddiq has been charged with facilitating their receipt of state land in a township project near the capital, Dhaka. They are out of the country and being tried in absentia.
Siddiq's lawyers have called the charges baseless and politically motivated.
Muhammad Tariqul Islam, a public prosecutor, disputed a claim by Siddiq that she is not Bangladeshi, saying the anti-corruption watchdog through investigations found that she is a citizen.
The prosecutor said if Siddiq is convicted she could be sentenced to three to 10 years in prison.
Siddiq in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian recently referred to Bangladesh as 'a foreign country' and called the charges against her 'completely absurd.'
She asserted to The Guardian she was 'collateral damage' in the longstanding feud between her aunt and Bangladesh's interim leader Muhammad Yunus. Hasina had a frosty relation with Yunus, and during her rule Yunus faced a number of cases including for graft allegations. Courts overturned those charges before he took over as interim leader days after Hasina's ouster last year in a student-led uprising.
Separately, the anti-corruption investigation has alleged that Siddiq's family was involved in brokering a 2013 deal with Russia for a nuclear power plant in Bangladesh in which large sums of money were said to have been embezzled.
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