Zia helped Rashid's family after killings
Late president Ziaur Rahman used to pay $100 a day to the family of Lt Col (retd) Khandaker Abdur Rashid as hotel expenses in Thailand following the assassination of Bangabandhu, Rashid's eldest daughter yesterday claimed.
Wife of Bangabandhu's self-proclaimed killer Rashid and his four daughters were sent to Thailand in late September 1975 where they stayed in a hotel for several months.
Assistant Commissioner of Detective Branch Ali Akbar said Rashid's daughter Mehnaz Rashid made the comments during a preliminary interrogation by DB officials following her arrest early yesterday.
She however denied her involvement in Wednesday's bomb attack on ruling Awami League lawmaker Fazle Noor Taposh.
Mehnaz said from Thailand they went to Dubai and then to Libya where her parents currently live and run family business.
Quoting her, AC Akbar said that Zia with the help of the then Pakistan prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto convinced Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to allow Rashid and his family to live in that country.
Rashid started a manpower business there and then a construction business with the help of Zia, Mehnaz told DB officials.
Mehnaz was only three when her family left the country. She studied in the United States and her sisters in London.
After completing study she served in the UN and then came to Bangladesh to organise Freedom Party floated by her uncle Lt Col (retd) Syed Faruque Rahman, another convict in the Bangabandhu murder case.
Mehnaz said she contested the last two parliamentary elections from Comilla-7 constituency on Freedom Party nomination. The last caretaker government asked her to organise the party but it was not possible because of fund constraints.
She said her father is pious and innocent although he took part in the killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman whimsically.
Ali Akbar said Mehnaz told them that she last talked to her father on Friday over cell phone. She has had regular conversation with her parents over phone.
Mehnaz said Ziaur Rahman gave her mother a duplex house in Gulshan "as an award" for Rashid's role in Bangabandhu assassination. She now lives in that house with her husband.
Source: http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=111256
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