Bangladesh court orders authorities to request Interpol red notice for arrest of British MP

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DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — A court in Bangladesh’s capital on Thursday ordered authorities to request that Interpol issue a red notice for the arrest of a British lawmaker on charges of corruption in a private real estate project.

Tulip Siddiq, a former British minister and an MP from Hampstead and Highgate in London, faces charges of corruption in Bangladesh as the country’s Anti-corruption Commission pursues a case against her.

Siddiq has already been sentenced to six years in jail in Bangladesh in three other corruption cases all involving her powerful aunt, the country’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Hasina was ousted in 2024 in a student-led mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule, and has been in exile in India since Aug. 5, 2024.

Siddiq earlier rejected all allegations against her, termed the verdicts as a “complete farce,” and said she is a British citizen, not a Bangladeshi national.

The commission said that Siddiq, using her connection with Hasina, influenced a process to award land to a private company in Dhaka’s upscale Gulshan area. Siddiq is the daughter of Hasina’s younger sister Sheikh Rehana.

Dhaka Metropolitan Senior Special Judge Mohammed Sabbir Faiz issued the order Thursday upon a petition by the corruption watchdog.

The order came after the commission’s Assistant Director A.K.M. Mortuza Ali Sagar sought the order for a red notice through Interpol to facilitate her arrest.

There was no immediate reaction from Siddiq on Thursday.

In January last year, Siddiq resigned as a British government minister in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Keir Starmer under pressure because of her ties to Hasina. Siddiq had said she had been cleared of wrongdoing but was quitting as economic secretary to the Treasury because the issue was becoming “a distraction from the work of the government.”

Three days after Hasina's ouster, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as interim leader and eventually oversaw an election on Feb. 12. The new government of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, the son of Hasina's main political rival and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, has taken over.