Bangladesh’s main opposition leader was arrested on Sunday morning, a day after a police officer and a demonstrator were killed and scores injured during a protest against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, his office said.
“Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir was arrested by police officers,” the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said in a statement.
“He was arrested by the police,” confirmed to AFP Shamaruh Mirza, Mr. Alamgir’s Australia-based daughter.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain said he was unaware of the arrest.
Mr Alamgir, 75, the BNP’s general secretary, has led the party since Khaleda Zia, the BNP president and two-time prime minister, was arrested and jailed and her son went into exile in Britain.
Ms Zia was convicted of corruption and is under house arrest after being released from a 17-year prison sentence in 2020.
Saturday’s demonstrations organized by the BNP and the country’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, were the most massive since the beginning of the year, AFP journalists on the scene noted, and reached new proportions three months before they were scheduled to be organized the general elections.
According to police, more than 100,000 supporters of the country’s two main opposition parties took part in banned rallies in the capital Dhaka to demand the resignation of Sheikh Hasina and make way for a neutral government to oversee the upcoming elections.
Sheikh Hasina, daughter of the country’s first president, has been in power for 15 years and has seen her country’s rapid economic growth, allowing it to overtake neighboring India in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. But his government is accused of corruption and human rights violations.
Both the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami called for a nationwide strike on Sunday to protest the violence.
Security measures were tightened in the capital on Sunday, with thousands of police and paramilitary border guards from Bangladesh patrolling the streets.