A Bangladesh court Monday ordered to jail the head of the country's largest Islamic party, a day after his arrest on corruption charges, a defense lawyer said. Metropolitan Magistrate Waliul Islam denied bail to Matiur Rahman Nizami, the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh chief and former industries minister, and sent him to Dhaka Central Jail pending his corruption trial, his lawyer Moshiur Alam told reporters outside the court. Nizami was arrested and taken from his home late Sunday, hours after the High Court rejected his bail plea in a graft case that involves awarding two contracts for managing container terminals without proper bidding. Also on Sunday, another Dhaka court jailed two other co-accused in the same graft case – former ministers M. Shamsul Islam and Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan. All three suspects have denied the charges against them, their respective lawyers said. The three were senior members of ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Cabinet in 2001-2006. Zia led a four-party alliance, which also included Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh. Meanwhile, Bangladesh's army-backed interim government has approved a new counter-terrorism law, laying down a maximum penalty of death for anyone involved in terrorist activities, a senior official said on Monday. The Cabinet chaired by government head Fakhruddin Ahmed approved an ordinance on Sunday that also provides for “speedy trial of terrorists by special courts”, with jail sentences ranging from three to 20 years. The ordinance defined an “act of terrorism” as – any act that poses a threat to the sovereignty, unity, integrity or security of Bangladesh. It said that anyone responsible for “financing terrorist groups, whether local or foreign, will also be tried under the anti-terrorism law and a convict will serve maximum 20 years of rigorous imprisonment or minimum three years with financial penalty.” The law empowered the authorities to ban any extremist group. Offences such as publicity or broadcasts in favour of any outlawed organization is punishable by up to seven years in jail. For sheltering a terrorist, one may be jailed for up to five years. Previously Bangladesh had no separate law for dealing with terrorists. They were instead tried under the normal penal code. The previous elected government drafted anti-terrorist legislation after a surge in terrorist activities earlier this decade.
