Hasina: "I have a ticket" to return

BRITAIN: Former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who has vowed to return home to face criminal charges against her, has a ticket to fly back but was told by her airline that she cannot board, she said on Thursday.

Hasina arrived in London from Washington on Thursday and said she intends to attempt to return to Bangladesh on Sunday, but the airline informed her that it had received a letter from the Bangladeshi government instructing it not to carry her.

The army-backed government of Bangladesh says it does not want her to return to the country she ruled from 1996 to 2001.

"If she returns to the country it is feared that she will again jeopardise discipline and economic activities in the country through provocative statements," the Home Ministry said on Wednesday.

But she said the authorities have no power to keep her out.

"I am a citizen of my country, so they have no right to stop me," she said. "I have to go back to my country, to my people. I am the daughter of the father of the nation."

"Once I have arrived there many things may happen. They may kill me. They may arrest me," she said.

"I have a ticket. The reservation is confirmed," she told Reuters in an interview at a London apartment rented for a short-term stay. "British Airways."

"I heard that they have given instruction to every airline, that any airline or any aircraft that takes me, they will not allow the aircraft to land in the country," she said. "But I have to find out my way."

A spokeswoman for British Airways declined to comment, citing privacy rules.

The military government in Bangladesh is trying to keep both Hasina and her successor as prime minister Begum Zia Khaleda out of the country's political affairs, and apparently out of the country altogether. The two women lead rival political parties that have clashed throughout the past decade.

Khaleda has not left Bangladesh but has been under virtual house arrest at her home for two weeks. Sources in her party said this week that she agreed to leave the country if the authorities were lenient to her jailed son, but that she changed her mind and now wanted to stay.

Hasina, whose father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was Bangladesh's first president, has a sister in London and children in the United States. But she said she has no plans to stay abroad.

"They filed false cases against me. The moment they filed the cases I decided to go back to my country to face the case," she said.

"Perhaps they thought that if they file a false case against me that I would be scared and I would not go back to my country. But I know very well, I know my conscience is clear that I haven't committed any such crimes. So this case is absolutely false. So I wanted to go back to face the case."

She said that her supporters would respond if she is not permitted to return, but added that she does not support violence.

"My people are there. I know people will react and people are with me," she said.

"Nobody can accept this."

Meanwhile a supporter of former Bangladesh prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia lodged a petition in court on Thursday to block efforts by the army-backed government to send her into exile.

Babul Chowdhury, a member of a front organisation of Khaleda's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), filed the writ in the High Court saying it was a human rights violation to force her to leave the country or "put her under house arrest".

The High Court said it would examine and rule on the writ on Sunday.

Analysts said Khaleda's decision to fight to stay in the country may have been encouraged by her rival Sheikh Hasina's determination to return to Bangladesh against government orders.

London, Dhaka, Friday, Reuters