Bangladesh's deposed president returns to jail

Bangladesh's deposed president returns to jail
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

DHAKA, NOV 20: Deposed Bangladeshi president Hussain Mohammad Ershad, freed on bail in 1997 after serving six years in prison for corruption, surrendered to a trial court and returned to jail on Monday.

After a brief appearance in court, Ershad, former military dictator and leader of the main faction of the Opposition Jatiya Party (JP), was taken to jail to serve five more years in a separate graft case. His lawyers said they would file bail petitions again.

Several thousand party activists jammed the court complex and police pushed them back to make way for the vehicle taking him to jail, witnesses said. ``I am ready to make any sacrifice in the interest of the country and people and not afraid of imprisonment and repression in political life,'' Ershad said in a statement.

Ershad, the longest serving Bangladeshi head of state, seized power in a bloodless coup in 1982 and was deposed in a 1990 mass pro-democracy uprising.

In August, a district court sentenced him to five years in jail in a separate 1991 corruption case and ordered him to pay a fine of more than 50 million Taka (about $1 million) or to serve two more years in jail and to surrender immediately. But he had delayed surrendering through writ petitions.