New Delhi
11 June 2008
After 11 months behind bars, former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is free. Her release is seen as a face-saving deal that allows her to go abroad for medical treatment, while ensuring the participation of her political party in planned national elections. VOA correspondent Steve Herman reports from our South Asia Bureau in New Delhi.
Hasina's rival, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, the head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, remains in jail on graft charges. She has refused a similar deal to go abroad for medical treatment, calling it a political trap. But she has asked that her jailed sons be released.
Officials in both parties acknowledge that the interim government might be planning to block any return to Bangladesh of either of the two powerful women - known as the "battling Begums" - once they go abroad.
The Awami League and the BNP have said they would not participate in planned national elections for parliament this December, if their leaders remained jailed.
The two rivals are widely blamed for the political upheaval, two years ago, which led to the imposition of a state of emergency and a caretaker government assuming power, with the backing of the army.