Terming the grenade attack on August 21, 2004, condemnable, BNP has said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's remarks are completely politically-motivated.
"The Aug 21 attack is doubtlessly the most condemnable incident in Bangladesh but the remarks by a government head in this regard is completely politically-motivated," said Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Thursday (Aug 24).
His remarks came a day after the PM blamed the then-BNP-led government of perpetrating the gruesome grenade attack on an Awami League rally in 2004 at the capital's Bangabandhu Avenue that left as many as 24 people dead and over 300 wounded.
"It was not possible to carry out such attack without patronisation of the BNP-Jamaat government,” Hasina told a memorial discussion on the 15th anniversary of the Aug 21 grenade attack in Dhaka on Wednesday (Aug 23).
Speaking to media at the party's Nayapaltan office after a meeting of BNP's National Standing Committee, Mirza Fakhrul hoped that the Aug 21 grenade attack would no longer be presented with political intention.
The then-BNP government brought an FBI team to investigate the attack and arrested Mufti Hannan, the senior BNP leader said.
A notorious Afghan war veteran, Mufti Abdul Hannan Munshi led the militant outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh that carried out 13 bomb and grenade attacks across Bangladesh between 1999 and 2005 killing over 100 people. He was executed for Aug 21 grenade attack on Apr 13, 2017.
GOVT BEND TO MYANMAR'S PRESSURE ON ROHINGYA REPATRIATION
Claiming the government totally failed in repatriation process for the Rohingyas, Mirza Fakhrul said, "They [government] has bent to the formula forwarded by Myanmar.
"The Rohingya did not volunteer to return as their demands on safety, settlement, land ownership and citizenship went uncertain," he said.
The senior BNP leader claimed the government, too, failed to engage the international community in repatriating the Rohingyas.
Mirza Fakhrul advised for holding all-party dialogue to forge a national unity on Rohingya issue as well as state heads' visit to both Bangladesh and Myanmar to find out the solution to the crisis.
Bangladesh is currently hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas with nearly one-third of them entered the country since Aug 25, 2017
A military crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state that began in August 2017 drove more than 730,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. Myanmar denies widespread wrongdoing and says the military campaign across hundreds of villages in northern Rakhine was in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.
"Hundreds of Rohingya women and girls were gang-raped, with Myanmar military was responsible for 82 per cent of these gang rapes. Sexual violence committed by the Myanmar troops in 2017 indicated the military's genocidal intent to destroy the mainly Muslim ethnic minority, United Nations investigators said in a report released recently.
BNP's Foreign Affairs Committee, however, will hold a seminar titled "Rohingya Repatriation and Role of Bangladesh" in the capital on Wednesday (Aug 28).
LEGAL ACTION ON KHALEDA CASE
BNP has also decided to take next legal action challenging a High Court order on Zia Orphanage Trust graft case against its jail party chief Khaleda Zia, Mirza Fakhrul said.
Khaleda is now behind bars since she was convicted in Zia Orphanage Trust graft case on 8 Feb 2018. She was sentenced to five-year imprisonment, which later enhanced to 10 by the Supreme Court.