Ailing former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, detained under emergency laws, was admitted to a private hospital Tuesday, Dhaka central jail officials said, according to dpa. Hasina's personal physicians said her health condition was worsening because of a critical attack by allergy, an unstable blood pressure and an impaired hearing. The chief of the opposition Awami League, who was arrested last July and interned in a government apartment, has been complaining of ill health and demanded treatment abroad, said top prison officer Major Shamsur Haider Siddiqui. "The jail code does not permit any under trial prisoner to receive medical help outside the country if such facilities are available at home," Siddiqui said. Hasina escaped an assassination attempt on her when an Awami League rally came under a grenade attack by suspected Islamic militants in 2004. But her eardrums were injured in the attack which left over a score dead. Hasina, 64, elder daughter of Bangladesh's founder president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has been accused of receiving extortion money for sealing a business deal abusing her power as prime minister between 1996 and 2001. The military backed interim government has also blamed Hasina for taking grafts during the processing of a deal on buying Russian built eight Mig 29 fighter planes for the country's air force. Hasina and her political rival ex-premier Khaleda Zia are under detention facing corruption charges as the non-party government stepped up its campaign against corruption allegedly committed during the political regimes.
