BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has travelled to London, a week after dismissing media reports on being summoned by acting Chairperson Tarique Rahman.
The party’s UK chapter confirmed that he was in the British capital.
“Mirza Fakhrul arrived in London on Friday,” BNP’s UK unit General Secretary Koysor M Ahmed told Bangla Tribune late on Saturday.
On Jun 2, several Dhaka-based news outlets reported that Mirza Fakhrul will be travelling to the UK upon Tarique’s instruction.
Bangla Tribune’s London correspondent had reported citing several UK BNP leaders, preferring anonymity, that he was summoned by BNP acting chief Tarique.
Mirza Fakhrul dismissed those as ‘rumours’ then. “Nothing like that happened. It’s all rumours,” he told Bangla Tribune in Dhaka the same day.
He, however, said he had plans to travel to Bangkok for medical purposes and flew for the Thai capital the next day.
BNP’s UK chapter leader Koysor told Bangla Tribune on Saturday that Mirza Fakhrul is scheduled to attend a party event on Sunday at the Royal Regency Hotel in London as the special guest with Tarique Rahman as the chief guest.
Tarique, the elder son of jailed BNP chief Khaleda Zia and her presumed political heir, went to London in September 2008 after being released on parole for treatment.
He has been convicted of money laundering and embezzlement of foreign donations made to the Zia Orphanage Trust. His mother is now serving a five-year term in the orphanage graft case by the Anti-Corruption Commission.
Tarique faces a slew of corruption charges and has been named in the cases of Aug 21, 2004 grenade attack that killed dozens of ruling Awami League leaders and injured many including Sheikh Hasina, the then-opposition leader.