State no party to case against Prof Yunus

Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud said the government is not a party to the case involving Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus and that the judicial process of Bangladesh is fully independent and transparent.

“With due respect to Dr Yunus, I would like to say that the judicial process of Bangladesh is transparent. That’s why many [members] of the ruling party face trials and even jail sentences,” he told journalists after meeting the non-resident ambassadors and high commissioners of 14 countries at the Foreign Service Academy yesterday.

Some 242 global leaders, including more than 125 Nobel laureates, on Monday expressed alarm over the “continuous judicial harassment and potential jailing” of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus in an open letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

They also proposed that a senior international lawyer lead a small team of independent legal experts to conduct a review of the cases against Prof Yunus.

Asked, Hasan Mahmud said the statement on Prof Yunus was published in the Washington Post as an ad, not as news. Such ad was also published before.

He, however, did not elaborate on the government not being any party to the case involving Prof Yunus.

On January 1, Prof Yunus and three other top officials of Grameen Telecom were sentenced to six months in jail in a case filed on September 9, 2021, by Labour Inspector (General) SM Arifuzzaman over labour law violations.

Lawyer Md Yousuf Ali, a lawyer for Grameen Telecom workers, on May 22, 2022, had told The Daily Star that all the other cases filed against Prof Yunus and Grameen Telecom were withdrawn by the latter’s employees after they reached a settlement over the claim of payments.

He said his clients had filed 104 cases with the labour courts and six cases with the High Court, claiming over Tk 437 crore as due payments. As Grameen Telecom agreed to pay the money, all 176 workers and employees instructed the lawyer to withdraw the cases.

For further clarification, The Daily Star yesterday called the foreign minister and texted him. He, however, did not respond to any.

About the meeting with non-resident envoys, Hasan Mahmud said they expressed interest in investing here to advance trade relations.

“Some countries have expressed interest in recruiting manpower from Bangladesh. There are scopes for agriculture in Africa.”

The envoys, who met the minster, are from Botswana, Cambodia, Czech Republic, The Gambia, Hungary, Jamaica, Luxemburg, Mongolia, North Macedonia, Peru, Slovakia, Slovenia, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Later, Swedish Foreign Minister Alexander Beg von Linde and Secretary General of The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) Indra Mani Pandey called on the minister.

Hasan Mahmud and Linde discussed cooperation on green energy, investment in ICT, and Rohingya repatriation.

With Pandey, he held discussions on climate change, infrastructure development, and the construction of the new BIMSTEC secretariat building in Dhaka.